The Diary We Carry
by Colubrina
Summary: If memory is the diary we carry about with us, what happens if we misplace it? Hermione Granger wakes up in a hospital with almost no recollection of who she is or either of the two men claiming to be her fiancé. "What's the last thing you remember?" The Healer pressed on through his little quiz and now things were really bad. "I… nothing," she said finally.
1. Chapter 1

**_Memory... is the diary that we all carry about with us. ~ Oscar Wilde_**

**_._**

When she opened her eyes the first time everything was fuzzy. She blinked and tried to make the world resolve.

"Her eyes are open," came a voice and she turned. "Her eyes are open," again, and two men were watching her, one dark, one fair. The dark one took her hand and said, urgently, "Stay with us, we're right here, you're okay," while the fair one stalked away. She frowned, closed her eyes again, and when she opened them the room was brighter and the bright man was talking, backlit by a window. He glowed in that light and she wondered if this was some kind of hallucination.

"She opened her eyes, don't tell me it's nothing."

"Sir, it was probably a –"

"They're open again." It was the dark man, he was holding her hand and, putting together that she must be in some kind of hospital – what could have happened – she held her arm out obediently for him to take whatever readings he wanted, too tired and confused to object.

"Well now," a woman bustled into sight, cutting off her view the glowing man. "Are you back with us? You gave everyone quite a scare, missy."

"What happened," she whispered.

"You fell down the stairs." It was the dark man. "Just tripped, an accident, but you," he was working to catch his breath and stay calm and she wondered why he was so emotional. "You hit your head pretty hard."

"You've been out for two days," the woman said briskly. "Scared your two blokes half to death, I'm thinking, but now that you're with us again I'm sure everything will be fine. I'll just go get the healer to take a look at you."

She felt so tired, and the healers were here, weren't they. She went to close her eyes again but the pale, fair man snapped, "Don't you let go again. Don't you fucking drift away from me, you hear? Stay right there." She forced her eyes open and looked at him. He was still up against the window, arms crossed over his chest. She couldn't even make out his expression against the brightness and she looked back at the darker man, sitting in a shadow holding her hand.

"Listen to him. We can't have you going off right after you get back."

"I've been unconscious for two days?" she could barely hear her own voice.

"52 hours, 43 minutes," the fair man said.

"We've been here the whole time," the dark man murmured. "We didn't leave you alone for a moment. These chairs, not comfortable to sleep in, you know." He seemed to be trying to twist his face into a smile. "You can make our sacrifice up to us later."

"But," she looked at him in confusion, "Who are you?"

His hand tightened on hers and as she closed her eyes again she heard the other man snap, "Where the fuck is that healer?"

When she opened her eyes again a determinably cheerful looking middle-aged man in a white coat was looking down at her. "Sorry to interrupt your nap. Mind if I pull up a chair and ask you a few questions."

"I, yes, no, of course," she stammered.

"Which is it?" The fair-haired man drawled.

"Shut up," hissed the one she's decided to call her dark angel. "This is not the time for your – "

"Be quiet, both of you" the healer doesn't even turn to look at either man, "Or I'm going to ask you both to leave."

"You can't," snapped the blond. "We're her…"

"I know who you are. The entire ward knows who you are, how much power you have, how much influence. You've waved that around like a flag to bully your way into this room with no regard for what are commonly called 'visiting hours' but if you actually care about this woman, you will be quiet and let me do my job." The man didn't raise his voice but she noticed her fair angel settled back against the window again, arms crossed and glaring but silent.

"Shall we try this again," the man smiled at her. "Let's start with the basics. You've been unconscious for a little over two days after you took a nasty fall. Scans show nothing wrong with you, but medical arts are ever imperfect and we sometimes learn more by talking to people than any other way. Now, how many fingers am I holding up?"

He held up three and she looked at them for a while; at last she heard her dark angel suck in his breath and immediately felt bad for worrying him though she honestly wasn't sure why. She was just trying to analyze exactly what she saw, to give a clear report with more information than just the number and why this stranger cared was confusing. "It's not exactly blurry," she finally said. "I can see that there are three, but they kind of shimmer, or wiggle."

"That's good." The healer smiled at her and when she looked at him with disbelief he laughed and said, "No, it's quite common right after coming out of a period of extended unconsciousness. If things still seem wiggly in a few days, then we'll start to worry. Right now, you can see so we call that good. How about the date. What year is it?"

"2008," she responded and he smiled again.

"Again, good news. Now, who's Minister of Magic?"

"Kingsley Shacklebolt," she was feeling more confident now. She'd been hit on the head, she'd been unconscious, but everything seemed to be in working order. She was weak, she was woozy and she wanted a shower but she was going to be fine.

"Great. Now, what's your name?"

She looked at the Healer, then, starting to panic, turned to her dark angel who was watching her with taut fear stretched across his face. She looked up at the light and that angel was holding himself like a man trying not to start raging. She glanced back at the healer, who still had a cheerful, encouraging smile on his face. She tried to figure out how bad this was from that smile; he was the professional here. "I... I don't know."

"Again, not uncommon. Don't worry." The man sounded totally at ease and she flicked a glance back at the dark man sitting by the side of her bed, hoping to see some kind of easing in his face. She didn't, but she reached out a hand to him, wanting some kind of support, something to ground her as the world spun out of control, even if it came from the hand of a stranger, and he grabbed it, held on to her as if she were some kind of lifeline for him.

"What's the last thing you remember?" The healer pressed on through his little quiz and now things were really bad.

"I… nothing." She said finally. "I don't remember… anything. How is that even possible?" Her voice was going up in a panic, she could hear herself getting hysterical.

"Nonsense," the healer's voice cut through the spiraling thoughts. "You know what year it is, you know basic political facts. Obviously, you can speak, you can reason. Again, this is not uncommon. I'm not worried, and I don't want you to be either. Everything will come back." He patted her hand. "Why don't you visit with your," he paused, "your friends? They've been most vigilant, sitting here by your bedside." He stood, turned and looked at the man leaning against the window, and said, "Don't upset her."

Then the healer left and she was alone in a hospital room with two strange men, one of whom was still holding her hand.

"I want a shower."

"Are you sure you're stable enough for that?"

She glared at the man and yanked her hand away from his. "I don't know who you are, but I'm quite sure I'm over the age of majority and thus allowed to make decisions about whether I shower for myself without your input." He closed his eyes during her words, swallowed hard.

"I'm just worried. You've been unconscious for a while; you might be a little shaky on your feet."

"Well, let's find out," she swung her feet over the edge of the bed and realized she wasn't only alone in a hospital room with two strange men, she was wearing a gown that opened in the back. So far, if she were making a tally of her day 'hospital gown' would go in the 'bad' column. Actually, the bad column would be pretty long. All she had for the 'good' column would appear to be 'alive' and 'conscious' which, before this, were things she's sure she'd pretty much taken for granted.

"I think," she muttered, "I can handle this." Then she stood up and the world wiggled to the left. Before she could even correct her balance her dark angel had grabbed her and was holding her steady.

"As usual," the other man muttered, "your idea of what you can handle is vastly larger than what you can actually handle."

"Just...walk me to the bathroom," she muttered in turn and, to her immense relief, the man holding her up didn't argue, just supported her as they crossed the room and helped her through the door. There was a chair in the actual shower and she relaxed. She really could get clean, could get this feel of sickness and stale sweat off her skin, without having to find a nurse to hold her upright.

"Go get her some clean clothes," the one man told the blond, who rolled his eyes but headed for the door.

"Who are you," she whispered after the man had helped her into the chair then left her, letting her have privacy.

. . . . . . . . . .

When she was done showering she realized she has to go back out, into this scary world where she doesn't know anyone, and she didn't even have anything to wear. She wrapped the thin, institutional towel around herself and opened the door, leaning cautiously against the frame and looking out. They were still there. The blond held out a pair of pajamas and she took a step towards him to grab them when the room tilted again and he suddenly grabbed her and was holding her steadily upright. "It's okay," he whispered. "We've got you." She buried her face against him, utterly humiliated that this stranger was keeping her from falling, that she was somehow in nothing but a towel, for goodness sakes, pressed up against this man's chest. He smelled… good. Like the sea, she thought. Salty and clear and clean. The scent was – it was something she actually knew.

"Why do you smell familiar?" She asked out loud, not meaning to. He kissed the top of her head and those arms held her tighter for a moment.

"You did know me fairly well, love, before you fell down the stairs," he said. "Do you want to get dressed or do I get to keep holding you in this delightful state of near nakedness?"

"Don't tease her," she could hear the other man snap and she looked at him, grateful and he smiled back at her.

"Dark angel," she murmured.

"If he's an angel, what am I?"

"Fair, fair Lucifer." She murmured. "From lux, lucis, Latin for light, and ferro, to bring or to carry. You are the one who brings the light. Light bearer."

"Well, her brain does still seems to function," muttered the dark one, "Even her judgment is on if she's comparing you to a fallen angel. Give her her clothes, let her get dressed." He was next to her, then, holding out his hand so she could take it, so he could help her back to the small bathroom where she can get dressed in privacy.

When she was finally dressed she slipped her way back out, looked at them. The dark one – she really needed names – wrapped an arm around her as soon as she was out the door, helped her to a chair.

"I had them change the sheets while you took the longest shower ever." The fair man announced.

"I, uh, thank you." She looked at him in confusion. "But why? Who _are_ you?" she muttered in frustration.

"Why is fairly simple," he smirked at her as she huddled in the corner of an armchair. An armchair, she realized, that one of them had slept in for the past two nights, watching her. "Looking after you is what I do, though I admit you're usually far less dependent than this. As to who," his smile faded. "Of all the myriad things I've done in my life, I never expected to be introducing myself to my fiancé."


	2. Chapter 2

"_Why is fairly simple," he smirked at her as she huddled in the corner of an armchair. An armchair, she realized, that one of them had slept in for the past two nights, watching her. "Looking after you is what I do, though I admit you're usually far less dependent than this. As to who," his smile faded. "Of all the myriad things I've done in my life, I never expected to be introducing myself to my fiancé."_

"Your name," he started off, "is Hermione. We've been arguing about the last name for several months now so forgive me if I refuse to give you ammunition for that battle. We met in school, re-connected several years after graduation, and have been engaged for months. You're bossy, brilliant, an unbearable nag and I adore you." She stared at the man. He was stunning to look at, even exhausted. He reeked, absolutely reeked, of wealth and privilege. Even without knowing anything about herself she was quite sure she wasn't his usual type. She looked uncertainly at the other man.

"Oh, he's telling the truth," he had his head in his hands, longish hair falling over his eyes. "He does adore you. It's sickening, really."

"Who - "

"I," he didn't look up, "am Blaise. Your _other_ fiancé."

"I… both of you?" She looked from one to the other. "I'm living some kind of double life, engaged to two different men?"

"No, not exactly," the fair one drawled. "We're all engaged. A bit of a ménage à trois, if you will."

"How?"

"You want me to explain the mechanics of three-way sex? He raised an eyebrow and she smothered a laugh. At that smothered giggle she saw the planes of his face relax and a thought flashed through her brain – I love this man – but it was wholly disconnected from any history, any reasons why. She looked over at the other man – at Blaise – and he was grinning at her as well, an almost lecherous smirk that made her heart pound. Him too, she realized. But I don't know how, or why. I just know it the same way I know the year.

"Do we have to stay here?" she asked, and Blaise narrowed his eyes at her. "I mean, is there a medical reason to stay or can we go," she hesitated and the blond man – I still don't know his name, she thought to herself – interrupted her.

"We can go home, if that's what you want."

"Maybe something familiar," she muttered, "something less… institutional… will trigger a memory."

"Ah, there's the crafty woman I know and love," he was already walking towards the door. "I'll get her checked out," he muttered to the dark angel - to _Blaise_ - "you get her packed up."

. . . . . . . . . .

The hospital staff was predictably obstructionist but hissed threats combined with the obvious reality that the three of them planned to leave no matter what anyone said garnered a speedy check out as well as a neatly written out list of home care instructions, a list of nursing agencies the Healer recommended and an appointment to come back the following day.

They were at the hospital door before she realized the blond man still hadn't told her his name, were at what was apparently their home before she contrived to interrupt his extraordinarily managing ways to ask what it was. He looked at her, taken aback, and she could see him replay their conversations in his head, could see him start to smile. "You really just shouldn't run off with total strangers, love. What if we were dangerous criminals?"

She was tired, so very tired even after just this short trip, and she was braced up against Blaise's side and not in the mood to be teased. "Well, as long as you're dangerous criminals with a more comfortable flat than the hospital room I think I'm okay with that. I mean, it's not like you're Death Eaters or anything, right?"

There was an awkward pause and she started to shake her head. "No. NO. There is no way I would get engaged to a war criminal. That's not even possible." She wrenched herself away from Blaise and almost fell over as she stumbled towards the fair-haired man and shoved his sleeve up. His arm was bare and she breathed out a sigh of relief until he whispered, a choked sound that seemed wrenched from him unwilling, "I keep it glamoured."

"Inside," Blaise muttered, "We need to have this conversation _inside,_" and he was pushing the door open. The other man – the bloody war criminal – helped her over the threshold, settled her into a large, soft chair in the room. The room was beautiful, all pale colours and washed with light from huge windows. A row of bookshelves filled an entire wall but when she started to get out of the chair to go look at them a hand on her shoulder pushed her back down.

"Sit," Blaise said, "Yes, you have a wall of books in the living room – which gave Draco's mother all kinds of decorating conniptions because apparently it breaks some kind of rule – but you can look at them later, when you're less shaky on your feet. Try to remember you're recovering from a head injury, that you were unconscious until a short while ago, that we all bullied your way out of the hospital to come home when any sensible person would say you should still be under observation."

"Remember is exactly what I can't do," she said and he cringed a bit.

"A poor choice of words, I'm sorry," he sighed, and pulled a straight-backed wooden chair up to her side and sat next to her.

"I take it your name is Draco?" She turned to the fair man who had sat himself down on some kind of sturdy table and was looking at her as though he were waiting to be struck. "And your mother doesn't care for bookshelves?"

He smiled, rather wanly, and said, "Not in the living room, no. Bookshelves, as she informed me at rather tedious length, belong in the library."

"And you're a Death Eater?"

He flinched. "Yes."

"That's not quite fair," Blaise interjected. "He was Marked by that lunatic when he was still underage, and he rapidly figured out what an incredibly bad situation he was in. He was found not guilty at his trial. He was a child soldier with a brand, Hermione, and he has a lot of guilt, and that's all. He wasn't a Death Eater so much as a different type of victim and he certainly isn't a Death Eater now, not in any way that matters, so don't throw that in his face. You won't let anyone else do it; trust me, I've seen you face down long time friends and force them to retract slurs they'd tossed at him by the sheer force of your fury." He looked down at his hands. "Don't, Hermione."

She flushed; she's sure she'd never liked being scolded and the speech she'd just gotten seemed, for all it had been delivered in a quiet, reasonable tone, like a brutal tongue-lashing. She wanted to get out, get away from these two strangers who seemed to love her, whom she seemed to love, and try to figure this situation out. "I think I should lie down," she said and rose to her feet, only to need to brace herself against the back of the chair. Both men lurched towards her and she glared at them, first one, then the other. "I think I can do it by myself." She began to walk towards one of the doors, each step a shaky wobble but her own shaky wobble, damn it.

"Do you want me to show you where our room is?" Draco asked her, a mocking lilt covering the hurt she could still hear in his voice. She'd hurt him; she tried to shy away from the thought but her own ruthless honestly pursued it anyway. He'd sat at her bedside, worried about her, brought her back to this lovely house when she'd asked, and she'd repaid him by recoiling from what was clearly a sensitive spot. "Or would you prefer a guest room so you don't have to share space with a branded monster?"

"Our room would be fine," she whispered and she could hear Blaise snap, "Draco, stop. She doesn't remember you. How would you feel if you woke up to – "?

"No, he's right," she said, cursing that internal honesty. She looked up at Draco – at her fair angel – and said, "I'm sorry." She looked down at the floor. "I'm really sorry, Draco." She moved her mouth around the name and wished it felt at all familiar. "Draco," she said again to see if repetition would help. It didn't.

He was at her side in a moment. "No, love, I'm sorry. It's hard to look at the woman I love and have her not know me, have her say things…I'm sorry. Let me get you settled upstairs." He held out an arm and she took it, unwilling to spurn courtesy offered right after her apology even though she'd really wanted to be able to walk on her own.

"Lucifer, huh?" he asked as he led her down a hallway towards a set of stairs. He tensed when she started to climb and she realized this must be where she'd taken her tumble.

"It's your colouring," she offered in explanation as she grabbed the railing with her free hand. "And in the hospital you were standing in the window so the light from behind made you seem to glow. You were like an angel, a light bearer."

"I don't think anyone's ever called me an angel before," he said, obvious amusement in his tone. "Devil, certainly."

"I doubt I'd love you if you were a devil," she said without thinking as she held onto the railing and tried to make sure her stability was all her own strength and the hand on his arm merely a symbolic courtesy. She didn't like having to lean on anyone this much, certainly not on a man she barely knew. Didn't know, except for his scent and this odd, disconnected knowledge of her feelings about him. She wondered how she'd fallen in love with a Death Eater, of all things; whether he'd been found innocent on the basis of his youth or not, she was quite sure he'd done things she'd find horrifying.

"Do you," he asked, his voice suddenly low, all the amusement gone, and she stopped at the top of the stairs and looked at him. "Not here," he said. "Don't stop here." He led her, definitely pulling her along now, down a wide hall to a door. He opened it and she was in what she supposed was their bedroom as he asked again, "Do you? Do you remember that?"

Her heart ached at the hope lacing his tone.

"Not with any detail," she admitted. "No reasons, no history. But you smiled at me in the hospital and… I knew." He pulled her into his arms and squeezed until she made a squeaking noise and he let her go. A little. She realized he was shaking, this tired, privileged man was holding onto her and shaking.

"Are you okay," she asked and he made a scoffing noise.

"You fell down the stairs and almost died and – "

"Unless the healer was lying, 'almost died' is probably a bit of an exaggeration."

" – you lay there in that hospital bed for so long and I just watched you breathe and then you woke up but you didn't even know who I was." His voice was hitching and he made a very undignified sniffing sound and Hermione knew he was crying, or at least was trying not to cry, as he held onto her and shook. "You still don't know who I am, don't know who Blaise is, don't know bloody anything about us or what we did or how we ended up here and I'm so afraid you're going to – "

"Please stop," she said pushing herself back from him. "You're going to work yourself into hysterics. Are you always this dramatic?"

He was surprised into a laugh and muttered, "You complain about that all the time."

"Well, hyperbole isn't helpful," she said as she began to walk towards the bed and he startled.

"What did you say?"

She frowned. "That hyperbole isn't helpful."

"You say that a lot," he whispered. "Are you _sure_ you don't remember?"

"Absolutely sure," she said, but a memory flickered at the edge of her brain and she shook her head. "You kissed me," she said.

"I kiss you a lot."

"No," she said in frustration. "I _remember_ you kissing me. I was looking out that window and you came up behind me and kissed me."

"It's coming back," he said, that hope back in his voice, and she turned to look at him, wobbled again, and got herself to the edge of the bed before she collapsed.

"I just wish my sense of balance would come back," she muttered.

"I don't know quite how to tell you this," he said, eyebrows raised mockingly as he tucked her into bed with gentle hands that belied the tone in his voice, "but you've never been especially coordinated. I mean, you did fall down the stairs."

"Tell me why I love you when you're clearly both overly dramatic and prone to mockery?" she quipped and he smiled at her.

"You have bad taste, obviously. I mean, you wanted bookshelves in your living room."

She lay back and watched him as he stood there, awkwardly looking down at her, hands now shoved in his pockets as though he weren't sure what to do with them. "I do, you know," she added much more quietly. "I just don't know why, or how it happened."

"Want the bookshelves? Oh, I know. Unlike you I don't have the mercy of forgetting the conversations with my mother about that. You'd think it was her house the way she objected."

"That wasn't what I meant," she said and he swallowed hard.

"I know." He stared down at the floor, and then settled down on the edge of the bed, balancing himself against the floor. "I love you too, Hermione. So much this is fucking killing me."

She put her hand out and, without looking at her, he took it. "Hey," she said.

He looked up, and she added, "You're not going anywhere, right?" When he shook his head, mutely, she continued, "and neither am I." She stopped for a moment and added, as lightly as she could manage, "I mean, how could I leave that wall of books, especially after you went to war with your mother for it."

"It was a significant argument," he agreed. "She actually cited sources to explain why we were committing some kind of decorating mortal sin. It would be a shame to leave the shelves after I won that battle on your behalf."

"So," she found herself rubbing her hand along the top of his, "the worst thing that happens is the memories never come back and I have to figure out why it is I love you, right? Are you so afraid that, given a second go-round, I'd change my mind?"

"Yes," he said. "Very much, yes." He pushed the sleeve back up on his arm and she looked again at the ugly Mark, burned into his skin. "I'm not very lovable." His voice tightened and he added, "War criminal, and all, as you just pointed out."

She put her hand over the mark, felt the way it was burned into his skin, the blackened scar, traced her fingers along the texture of it. It was so much worse than a simple tattoo; even now, years later the skin was puckered, the coloring had never faded to a simple scar. Around and around she moved her fingers and thought that getting this must have hurt, and terribly. She pictured him as a teen, gritting his teeth against what must have been agony, and wondered how his parents could possibly have let this happen. She found she was angry at them, these unknown parents, this mother who cared enough to argue about bookshelves but not enough to protect her son from this. He watched her with those haunted, grey eyes. "Why do you hide it," she asked, finally.

"Because I hate it," he said, obviously trying not to yank his arm back from her touch. "Because you hate it. We all make mistakes when we're young but I had to go as big as I could instead of just streaking through Trafalgar Square or something. It's… it's pain and horror and – "

She cut him off and said, very softly, "It's part of you." She was still tracing her fingers over it. "Don't hide it at home, okay? Let me learn to love all of you, even this."

He swallowed, and she watched his throat bob, and then he said, "Okay." That was all, but she could hear the echoes of all the things he'd wanted to say, all the reasons he didn't want to keep the scar visible, vibrating under that the one word.

How could she be tired again? She'd been unconscious for days. All she'd done was shower, come home, walk up a set of stairs and yet she felt exhausted. She closed her eyes and settled herself onto the bed, her head on the pillow and her fingers still on his arm. "Draco," she whispered and he immediately murmured, "yes?"

"Don't go," she said, feeling irrational and demanding but wanting him there anyway. He laughed again, a warm sound that she wished she could remember hearing before.

"I haven't left your side for two days, love. I'm hardly going to do it now."

"I'm sorry," she said again. "Sorry I don't remember, sorry I… your arm."

"You told me you love me still," he said, moving so he was grasping her fingers with his own. "Nothing else matters."

. . . . . . . . . .

**A/N -** I am surprised (and, let's be honest, gratified) by the response the first chapter of this fic garnered. I hope chapter 2 doesn't disappoint.

I should have managed a personal response to everyone who left a logged in review; if I missed you it's because my brain is a sieve, not because I don't wholly and utterly appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts with me. (Guests and people with the PM feature turned off are, alas, harder to PM.)


	3. Chapter 3

"_You told me you love me still," he said, moving so he was grasping her fingers with his own. "Nothing else matters."_

She woke, later, to a dark room and low voices. She's so tired she can't push herself all the way awake, and they sound so worried. Why are they both so tense? They were supposed to go do something today, what was it? One of those outings where they flaunted their relationship and made everyone angry? There were people who loathed her for taking two purebloods off the market, people who hated them for sullying a war heroine, people who were just disgusted by the whole ménage idea. She's joked before that they had managed to find a way to offend everyone. She thinks she's joked. Everything seems fuzzy.

"She remembers," Draco was saying, and there was a catch of breath as Blaise inhaled. "Not everything, barely anything," he continued, but she remembered me kissing her, remembered she loved me. It's coming back. It's going to come back, it has to."

"What if she leaves," Blaise sounded so bleak.

"She won't," Draco whispered the words, seemed to be willing himself to believe them. "She said she wouldn't."

She was trying to wake up all the way, throw off this blanket of sleep so she could reassure them, reassure her wounded loves that she wasn't ever leaving, but she was so tired all she could do was watch them fall into one another's arms, shaking and clinging to one another.

What were they going to do that has them so upset, Hermione wondered, and why can't she remember? As she slips back down into deeper sleep she comforted herself that she'll surely remember their plans when she wakes. She can talk to them in the morning.

. . . . . . . . . .

When she woke, Draco was gone. Sun leaked into the room around curtains that had been yanked carelessly across windows and one of the thin swords of light sliced into Blaise where he sat in a stuffed chair, leaning down on one hand and watching her.

"I'm not going to stop breathing," she said and he startled and then laughed.

"Easy to say that now."

"Where's Draco? He told me he would stay." As soon as she said it she worried he would feel hurt and she thought she saw the tiniest of flinches on his face and she reached a hand out. "Angelo," she added. "My very own angel."

"I'll get you some tea," he said, rising, and she blurted out, "Don't leave."

Then, more quietly she added, "Please don't leave."

He settled back into the chair and watched her in the gloom, still chopped by that one beam of light. "Your wish," was all he said. "I told Draco to go lie down; he's exhausted."

"Talk to me," she said, pulling herself to a seated position. She felt better, so much better than she had yesterday. The world didn't seem to want to tip away from her when she moved, her head felt clearer.

"Why angel?" he asked.

"Both of you ask the same things," she said, shaking her head a little before smiling a bit. "When I woke up in that hospital bed I thought you might be a hallucination, honestly. Like an angel watching over me."

"You have it backwards, love," he said but he seemed to ease a bit and settled back into his chair.

"Well," she smiled at him, perhaps a bit wanly, "meeting one's fiancé – fiancés - seemingly for the first time, from a hospital bed is a bit of a peculiar experience. I think I'll have to beg your indulgence for all sorts of things that will seem backwards. Everything is… very strange."

"Let me start to fill in the gaps in your memory, then," he said. "Ask me anything."

"How did we meet?" She'd propped herself up against the headboard in the giant bed - you could hold an orgy here with no one feeling crowded. She had to assume all the bedding had to be custom made; it was an absurd bed, a glorious bed, and she felt a little embarrassed by how much she rather liked its over the top indulgence.

Blaise grinned at her. "At school. And, no, before you ask we weren't sweethearts as kids, weren't even friends."

She squinted at him and he tried to squelch his mischievous smile and she thought that half smirk, half grin looked far more at home on his face than the worry she'd seen there almost since she'd opened her eyes the day before. "You want me to explain, don't you?"

"Well, I don't exactly know anything so..."

"You know you love me," he said quietly, that sad hope she'd heard in Draco's voice laced through his as well.

"OK, I know a handful of things. I'm a little sketchy on the details."

"You do know that though, right?" He watched her and her heart ached at how vulnerable he was, how afraid.

"Yes," she admitted, thinking she'd probably have lied to him just to reassure him. It was disconcerting to be the focus of this much nearly mute longing. "Flashes of other things too. I remember you buying me a cotton candy and me shoving it into your face but there's no context, no before and after."

"You remember that?" He looked charmed and pleased by that disclosure. "That was our first date."

"Tell me." She patted the bed next to her and he looked hesitant.

"I don't want to..."

She glared at him and he finally rolled his eyes and pulled himself onto the bed, sat next to her. "You are the stubbornest witch alive. These aftercare instructions clearly state we aren't supposed to sleep in the same bed for the week."

"We aren't sleeping," she said with a shrug. "You're talking and I'm listening."

"I don't want to get in the way of your recovery," he said, but she noticed his expression looked a bit like a starving man offered food and she reached her hand to his cheek. He pressed it against his skin, all the warmth from her hand soaking into his skin. "I was so afraid," he whispered, "we were teasing you about your name and you were laughing and then you fell and you were so still, so very still."

"I'm okay," she said. "Just shaky, but that'll pass."

"You don't remember us," he said. "It's not okay."

"I remember the cotton candy," she said and a flicker of a smile lit his mouth. "Tell me why I did that."

"Do you remember what 'mudblood' means?" he asked and she inhaled sharply. "I'm guessing that means 'yes'. Draco and I were ... less than kind... to you about that in school. You'd told me not to worry about it, that we'd all been kids just mindlessly repeating the prejudice we heard at home, which was true if more generosity than either of us - any of us - deserve, but I made a joke while you were standing there with this big giant cloud of spun pink fluff that you would replace the mud in your veins with sugar if you ate all of that."

"And so I shoved it into your face."

"You did. And almost stormed off and left me at that wretched fair alone. I had to chase you past snow cone stands, a chicken judging contest and through at least two groups of elderly ladies and beg you to let me try again." He smiled and she looked shocked.

"How can this be a memory that makes you smile?"

"Because you gave me a second chance," he said simply. "You told me if I wanted a minute of your day after that crack then I'd better try courting you as if you were the most cloistered, high-status pureblood in all of Europe and so I did. Bit by bit you started to believe I meant it, that I really wanted you, really valued you, wasn't just after a quick shag. And months later, after a series of formal, scripted dates - I mean, I found chaperones to sit behind us at the ballet and everything - you showed up at my flat with a giant cone of that ridiculous candy. I'm not even sure where you'd found it outside a fair, to be honest, and you told me it was my turn to shove it in your face and I almost did, right there on the steps. I'd been a little pissed, I admit, that you'd made me jump through so many hoops for what I'd thought of as, at most, a tactless joke but you were right. Making me treat you like a social equal really rubbed my nose in the fact that, on some level, I'd still thought of you as some kind of peasant who should be grateful for my attention. You beat that out of me; you made me a better person and that sounds so incredibly trite when I say it but..." he sighed. "Somewhere in all those trips to the ballet and opera, the appropriate gifts that almost always made your mouth quirk up in this amused grin, I just fell for you, fell hard."

Hermione listened to him, watched him smile at the memory of how hard she'd made it for him, how she'd made him see her as an equal. "What did you do with the cotton candy I brought you?"

He smirked at that. "I told you that a gentleman would never shove things in a lady's face, something if you had any breeding at all you'd know."

"And then I slapped you?" She sounded almost hopeful and he laughed.

"And then you laughed, called me an elitist snob, and came in and we spent time together without a chaperone for the first time in months and I fed you that candy one bite at a time and when we were done you nearly ravished me." He looked at her. "By then it really was a joke, and we both knew it."

She leaned over and rested her head on his shoulder. The position was awkward and crinked her neck in a way she didn't like and she shifted and moved until she finally ended up just curled with her head in his lap which, given she didn't really know him, seemed itself rather awkward. It was then she realized she hadn't ever changed after they brought her home from the hospital and she wanted to get out of these pajamas and into real clothes. She wanted to get up.

She sat up and caught him, hand raised, just about to start stroking her hair. "Before you start petting me, I think I could use another shower," she said. "And food. And clothes I haven't slept in."

"Does that mean I get to pet after all those conditions are met?" He had that grin on his face again and she reached out and touched his mouth with her fingers as he froze under her touch.

"You have a really perfect smile," she said, very quietly. "Blaise. Angelo. Have I ever been able to tell you no when you smile that way?"

"Upon occasion," he said, his lips moving against the hand she still had lightly brushing his mouth.

"I'm glad I can resist," she said, still watching him, feeling her heart thump and her stomach flutter. "Or could."

"You're bossy and stubborn," came a voice from the doorway, and she turned to see the fair one – Draco – standing there, leaning really, his shoulder pressed up against the doorframe and a smirk of his own dancing about his mouth as he watched them, her leaning towards the other man, her fingers at his lips. She felt like she'd been caught with her hand in the biscuits and flushed and he laughed. "You've always been able to resist us both, tell us where to go, captivate us totally." He shook his head and she watched that light hair move and then settle back down around his face, watched him impatiently push it out of his eyes. "I came to tell you that, if you're feeling better, I could make breakfast."

"You cook?" The words were out of her mouth before she had a chance to think about them and he laughed again.

"Better than you do, sweetheart." He looked at Blaise then and the two men exchanged some kind of coded male glance and he added, "You should get up because we have to haul you back to the hospital to be poked and prodded again." He held up three fingers. "How many, Hermione?"

"Two?" she said innocently and watched him blanche before she cocked her head to the side and said, "Sweetheart?"

"You are going to be the death of me," he muttered. "Blaise, get her cleaned up and ready for travel if you have to scrub her yourself. I'll do that cooking thing."

"How about," Hermione edged away from the man next to her on the bed whose grin had turned somewhat predatory, "you show me the shower and fetch me something to wear and I handle the scrubbing."

"You're no fun," he pouted, a hint of that grin lurking, but when she muttered, "I don't exactly know you well enough for group showering" the grin faltered and he got up and held his hand out.

"Let me show you the bathroom. Maybe we should do a grand tour once we get back from the hospital. Not knowing your way around your own house has to be peculiar and it's an easy enough thing to fix."

"I don't," she muttered, stung by the way he had the nerve to look hurt she didn't want to strip down and shower with him.

"I know," he said, voice clipped. "The bathroom you usually use is through here," he opened a door, "and I'll leave some clothes on the bed. Things I know you like," he added with a slight hint of bitterness.

"I _don't_," she said again, pleased to see she seemed to have regained at least her physical equilibrium after her sleep but still thrown off balance by this man who was opening drawers and pulling out clothes with sharp, short movements.

"You do," he said, "or you did a few days ago. Do you want me to wait?" He stood, then, his arms crossed looking at her as she hovered in the doorway between their room and the bath.

"I…" she started to shake her head and he said, voice gentler, "Because it's no problem. I'd rather wait, really, and know you're okay."

"You don't need to be this good to me," she muttered.

"I do, actually." He settled back into the chair. "It's that love thing, mixed with a substantial amount of both worry and relief. Yell if you need me."

"I will," she whispered and shut the door behind her with a soft click and stood, her ear pressed to the wood listening to him sob, great racking sobs he was trying to muffle but that she could still hear. She thought about his grin, his heart, about waking up to a confusing world with almost no anchors but his hand in hers. Thought about him chasing after her at some fair, presumably covered in cotton candy as she stormed off, thought about him courting her, determined to prove he wasn't still prejudiced. She wished she could remember all of that. She opened the door. "Blaise," she said, so quietly she wasn't sure he'd hear her.

He was already leaning back in the chair with so much false ease if she hadn't heard him she would never have believed he had just been upset. Who is this man who could wholly cover his emotions in the space of time it took her to open the door? Who dissembles that well? She has a flash, then, of boys and girls in green ties, expensive shoes peeking out from under school robes, laughing with the cruel confidence of power while someone else, some boy, mutters near her ear, "They lie the way normal people breathe."

Blaise raised his eyebrows and looked at her. "Problem already?"

Several, she thought, but what she said was, "I'm afraid I might slip," getting the words out before she could change her mind. "Maybe you could wait in the bath so you could…"

"Well, if you want," he said, pulling himself up with lazy grace. A hint of the smirk came back, "I could scrub your back?"

"You can hold the towels and make sure I don't fall," she said, flushing again, starting to regret her impulsive offer.

"Or I could do that," he agreed, and slipped past her, sat on a small bench in the large room. She turned and stood, overcome with the absurdity of her own predicament. She doesn't want to strip in front of this near stranger to take a shower, no matter how well she'd known him before. She also couldn't bear to leave him sobbing alone outside the door. Now what does she do?

He solved the problem, pulling a giant towel from under the bench he was on and holding it out in front of him, giving her at least a partial privacy screen. "Here," he ordered, " I promise not to peek." He looked at her and sighed, "It's hard, Hermione, to remember that you have no idea who I am. I know I'm crossing all kinds of boundaries and leering when I shouldn't and… and… it's just hard to turn off all the ways we've interacted for ages and treat you like a stranger."

"There really need to be some kind of social rules on how to handle this," Hermione muttered, tugging off her clothes and wrapping herself in the towel before stepping into the shower enclosure.

Once there she simply stopped and stared. "Blaise," she said, her voice both amused and somewhat aghast, "I think I've been in rooms smaller than this shower."

"I know." She could hear him sighing again, though this time that sigh was lined with suppressed laughter. "The flat is kind of outrageous but that's what you get when you let Draco pick things out."

"Are you two…" she felt embarrassed even asking and cut herself off.

"Yes," she could almost hear the grin. "Very much so."

"And we all…"

"Oh yes." Now he was laughing again and she turned on the water to hide how flustered she felt. At least, she thought to herself, she'd somehow charmed him out of his fears and grief. And, despite sybaritic excess she had to admit this shower was brilliant. She let the water stream over her, washing away the feeling of weakness far more thoroughly than the little shower at the hospital had, and tried not to picture Draco and Blaise together. It was a doomed effort and when she wrapped herself back up in the towel and poked her head out the door to where Blaise waited on the little bench she found herself flushing at the sight of the man. He was, she admitted, so very beautiful. They both were, and the thought of them…

She stopped her thoughts with an act of will, but not before it was obvious she'd been staring at the man in front of her, not before he'd seen her eyeing him. He smiled again, that irresistible smile, but forbore to tease her. Instead he pulled her to the bench next to him and, with a smaller towel in hand he'd procured while she'd been in the shower, while she'd been resolutely not picturing him naked, and he began to carefully blot her hair. She slowly relaxed as he worked to dry her hair, then pull it up into some twist that he pinned into place. "You're so beautiful," he murmured when he was done and wiping the last few droplets of water from her shoulders. He bent down and she felt his breath on her neck moments before he pressed the lips she had most certainly not been thinking about earlier to her skin. "We were so scared we'd lost you, Hermione. Both of us."

She turned, her eyes wide, and, before she could reason herself out of it, had brushed her lips against his. He became still for a moment and then had his hands on either side of her face and was slowly and very thoroughly kissing her. She fumbled with the towel she had wrapped around herself, struggling to keep it pulled up as she softened more and more into this man's touch. When he drew away from her, when he took a finger and traced it along her cheekbone, across her lips, she yanked the towel back up and clutched it to herself.

"Let's get you dressed," he murmured. "Draco is surely done making breakfast by now."

. . . . . . . . . .

_**A/N – **__Thank you for reading and reviewing and (I hope) enjoying. _

_To answer some common questions people have asked in the reviews: I see this as moderately long. I'm drafting chapter 7 now and I'm thinking not epic but not short either. Ron and Harry will eventually make an appearance but they aren't major players in this story._

_Your reviews are my cup of coffee, sipped in a quiet café away from the ruckus of school vacation. Which means I like them._


	4. Chapter 4

_She turned, her eyes wide, and, before she could reason herself out of it, had brushed her lips against his. He became still for a moment and then had his hands on either side of her face and was slowly and very thoroughly kissing her. She fumbled with the towel she had wrapped around herself, struggling to keep it pulled up as she softened more and more into this man's touch. When he drew away from her, when he took a finger and traced it along her cheekbone, across her lips, she yanked the towel back up and clutched it to herself._

"_Let's get you dressed," he murmured. "Draco is surely done making breakfast by now."_

Draco, she was startled to find out, really could cook. He had bacon, tomatoes, eggs, and toast all laid out for her when she finally made her way downstairs, tucked into clothes Blaise had picked out, swearing they were her favorites. Her fair angel looked up when she walked through the door and his eyes slipped from her hair to her bare feet and he grinned. "Blaise did your hair, didn't he?" he asked and she self-consciously raised her hand to the twist. "It looks good," he reassured her, leaning back against the counter looking, she thought, rather good himself. "You just never put your hair up on your own."

The two men exchanged one of those looks and she muttered, "You can both stop communicating via glances over my head."

"Sorry," Draco said, not sounding sorry at all, as he dished up far too much food. When she gave the plate a doubtful squint he said, with annoying cheer, "The homecare instructions were clear that you needed to eat. I'm just following orders."

"Why do I feel you only do that when it suits you anyway," she continued to eye the plate and its more than generous helping of breakfast and ignored the snicker coming from behind her.

"I always do what you ask," the man protested.

"So obviously false," she said as she settled on a stool at a counter and began to poke at the eggs with her fork. "I lost my memories, you know, not my ability to tell when someone's being disingenuous."

"You seem better," he noted as she ate one bite and widened her eyes in surprise at how good it was. "I told you I could cook," he added with, she thought, a rather annoying level of smugness in his tone.

"It's fine," she muttered, not wanting to gush because the git was smirking at her now and, damn, this was really good. He just grinned as he watched her eat – devour - the food he'd prepared. She swallowed and glanced back at Blaise, still lurking in the doorway. "Am I the only one eating?"

As the men did another one of those things where they exchanged glances – something she decided to ignore this time – and as Blaise began to fill his own plate she thought about what holes she cared most about in her personal history. The blond had his back to her and was piling dishes in the sink and starting a series of cleaning charms on them when she said, "Draco," and he turned – spun – around. "Tell me how we ended up here, you and me, together," she said.

Blaise sat down on another stool and, with a blatant smirk, said, "This should be good."

Draco poured himself some coffee from a pot and leaned back to look at the two of them at the counter and began his story.

"We knew each other in school, which I'm sure Blaise told you. Though 'knew each other' covers a great deal of 'I was a total arse to you and you repeatedly bested me in every possible way.' After the War, in which you were a hero and I was most decidedly not, we didn't see one another for years. I can't say I'd forgotten you existed; in a world where you're lauded as a golden girl despite your vigorous attempts to stay out of the papers that would have been impossible, but I didn't exactly socialize with you. And then Blaise dumped me for you."

She looked up from her breakfast at that.

"It's true," Blaise grinned at her. "I'd been dating the man, though very casually, so don't let him make it sound like I broke his heart or anything, and I ran into you at a bookstore and was smitten."

"My heart was definitely broken," Draco protested and Blaise rolled his eyes.

"You had a date within hours of my telling you we were done."

"It was Astoria!" the man protested. "That hardly counts."

"Uh huh," Blaise went back to eating.

"Anyway," Draco drawled, "I got dumped for the girl who'd always beaten me at _everything_ and I was less than thrilled. And then the man started doing this insane courting ritual thing as if you'd grown up in a convent or something. I didn't know anyone who still actually insisted on a duenna for coffee dates and I thought he'd lost his mind, no one was worth all that trouble. When I caught him reading an etiquette book from eighty years ago and copying down lists of appropriate gifts I was sure of it.

"Then, while I was out with my mother, I ran into the both of you. This was after you two had finally stopped hauling that chaperone with you everywhere and he was looking at you like you were the most precious thing he'd ever found; it was enough to curdle milk, all that doe-eyed fawning."

Hermione flicked a glance at Blaise who shrugged over his eggs. "You're quite lovely and I'm really just very shallow so I tend to look at you a lot," he said while giving her a look that belied those words. She smiled back at him, feeling herself melt in this man's gaze again. This combination of barely knowing him, knowing she loved him, knowing he absolutely adored her? This combination was turning out to be ridiculously potent. Looking at the other man she spotted a similar look on his face, though his was combined with a little more worry. He still doesn't think I'm going to stay, she thought. She reached her hand out towards him, over the counter, and he moved forward and took it, kissing her fingertips. She pressed her hand to his cheek and mouthed, 'I love you,' at him and he closed his eyes and seemed to take a moment to collect himself.

"When we met that day, my mother was less than pleasant. You might have been a war heroine, but she couldn't believe Blaise was dallying with a woman she considered beneath him. She'd been acting like a bitch all day and I was tired of it and as she dripped out one snide little put down after another I snapped and told her, in front of both of you, that not only was I not in sympathy with her condemnation of Blaise, I envied him having captured the heart of such an ideal woman and if I thought I had the faintest hope of being accepted I'd start courting you – courting you both – myself.

"Now, she'd been unhappy enough I'd dated Blaise to begin with and that I'd consider returning to him with a Muggle-born – not the term she used, by the way – as a third partner was clearly the most horrifying thing she could imagine. And you, well, you'd clearly had it with her snippy prejudice and you announced, looking her straight in the eye, that you'd be delighted to consider my suit."

"Are you telling me I started to date you in order to spite your mother?"

"Pretty much." He grinned at her.

"The woman who argued with you about whether we could have bookshelves in our own living room?" The woman, she thought to herself, who let you be branded with that Mark.

"That's the one." Draco leaned back and laughed. "I honestly thought we'd gotten ourselves into an untenable situation because we were both just too ridiculously stubborn to back down until we actually went out the first time."

She watched a softer expression settle over his features as he recalled that date. The sardonic, mocking smile dropped away and she felt her heart pound as she watched him. Here was this person she inexplicably loved. "Blaise was there; he clearly had no intention of letting me woo you away from him. This was a three-person deal or nothing and his preference appeared to be 'nothing' though he seemed willing to at least consider the idea, or to humor you in your desire to spite my mother. He hovered. He was overwhelmingly attentive. He subtly cut me out all night. And yet, the more time I spent with you the more utterly charmed I became. You were funny and smart and had a biting sense of humor and I left that night without so much as a kiss from you – from either of you – and couldn't wait to go out with you again."

"I was a prick to you," Blaise acknowledged.

"You were much nicer than I would have been in your place."

"In that I didn't try to set you on fire or something? I suppose. I didn't really think anything would come of it, to be honest. Your prejudice was pretty well established and I never thought you'd do more than flirt with us both and then move on to someone else. I was just enjoying knowing how upset your mother was about the whole thing. She wasn't ever my biggest fan what with my being both male and not quite as Anglo-Saxon as she'd like; that she had to bite her tongue while you pursued a threesome with me _and _ a muggle-born?" Blaise snorted and Hermione's already low opinion of Draco's mysterious, opinionated mother dropped another notch. "And," the man added, almost as an afterthought, "I had my own reasons for thinking it worth my while to get closer to Draco."

Draco snorted at that and Blaise gave him one of those irritated looks.

"So…" Hermione tried to keep them focused. "We went out, all three of us, Blaise was posturing, you were charmed and I was… charming?"

"Actually, you were kind of a bitch," Draco said with a shrug. "You needled me about the war time stuff, made snide comments about my ancestry and implied I was inbred, and you kept touching Blaise on the shoulder or knee to the point I suggested you just pee on him if you wanted to establish ownership so badly."

Hermione nearly choked on her tomato and Blaise was at her side instantly, fussing and glaring at Draco. "It's okay," she managed to get out. "I just wasn't expecting that. Please tell me I didn't pee on you."

Blaise snickered and Draco burst out laughing. "Oh, it is so tempting to tell you that you did," Draco said around his smirk. "But, no, you didn't. What you did was take the bitchiness down a bit and start to actually treat me like a person." He frowned. "Not many people do, you know. Either I'm fawned on because of the money or figuratively spit on because of the Death Eater history."

"Not always figuratively," Blaise added.

"And it was obvious you were, even aside from the crazy touching thing, utterly mad about Blaise and you were polite and pleasant to the waitress and you… you just charmed me. I don't know how else to put it. Both of you. I wanted… that. I wanted to be loved that way, to have someone lean on me the way you leaned on him at the end of the night when you'd had one glass of wine too many and you were tired but you utterly trusted him to take care of you. And I wanted that someone to be you. And," he hesitated, "and I missed Blaise. He jokes that he didn't break my heart, and he didn't, of course, but it hadn't been quite as casual as he implies either. I'd been on the verge of falling in love when he left and watching him look at you, I felt a kind of helpless, bitter longing that he'd never looked at me that way."

"Do now," Blaise said and Hermione nodded. That, certainly, was true. Even if most of the looks they exchanged seemed to be about their concern for her the way they loved each other was obvious.

"It seems too pat," she said into the pause. "Too perfect."

"Hah," Draco laughed. "When I said I'd been an arse to you at school, I was understating it. You had no reason to give me any chances at all and if you hadn't been pissed at my mother you wouldn't have. Every date was like an audition. You made me prove I wasn't like my parents, raked me over the proverbial coals for everything nasty I'd done in school – and you have a memory that's incredible…"

He stopped suddenly and flushed and she forced a tight smile to her face.

"I'm sorry," he said. "That was beyond tactless."

"Just… go on," she said.

"You made me explain my choices before and during the War. And you hated them, hated what I'd done. Some of it, sure, I'd been fairly heavily coerced into but still... I'd watched you be tortured, you know." She paled, egg-laden fork half way to her mouth; she hadn't expected that and she slowly lowered the fork down. "You couldn't bear to see the mark on my arm. You flinched like someone was about to hit you whenever you saw it. We'd been dating for months before I really understood how much bravado had been in that dare you'd thrown in my face, in my mother's face." He exhaled sharply and looked down. "You've always been so much braver than I am, so much braver than I even know how to be. And now you don't even want me to cover the Mark. I… I'd do anything for you, you know."

"Tell her about the incident with Dean," Blaise said, his voice quiet.

Draco smiled at that, a wan smile that seemed forlorn. Hermione looked anxiously at Blaise who nodded at her to reassure her.

"One day we were out, all three of us, and it had started to go really well. You'd started to unconsciously touch me; you'd take my hand, let me help you into a seat. You leaned on me one night and I'd sat there, frozen, looking at Blaise with utter panic in my eyes while he laughed at me. I knew I wanted you, wanted you both, knew you didn't hate me anymore, but there's such a gap, you know, between 'not hate' and 'love'. And then, this one night, one of your old friends confronted you, wanted to know what you were doing with me. Blaise had gone off to the loo and he came back to find me flinching under accusations of things I'd done during the war – all true – and you simmering more and more as this guy hissed his invective at me, and by extension you."

"You didn't see me," Blaise took up the story, "but at some point you'd had enough and you stood up and slapped the guy, then, as he stood there, his hand on his cheek, you just leveled him. For a good five minutes you let him have it, a harangue I wish I could repeat because it was beautiful. You accused him of dwelling in the past, of not using discernment to tell when a person had changed, of not caring whether someone had changed, of infantilizing you – how dare he assume you couldn't be trusted to choose your own companions. You'd started to question his own ethics when I cut you off."

"If there was a moment I knew I was helplessly yours that was it." Draco shrugged, "and that's also when I believed you had grown to care for me."

"And I kissed you that night," she whispered. "In front of everyone."

Both men turned sharply to look at her. "I turned from Dean and kissed you to let everyone know you were mine, that we were actually together. And you just sat there, terrified and shaking, and I whispered into your ear that you needed to kiss me back or I'd think you didn't like me and you did, finally, and when we broke apart someone muttered, 'get a room' and you were about to cry."

"You remember anything more?" Blaise watched her but she shook her head.

"It's like the cotton candy. I remember just the one thing, like short scene cut out of a movie, but nothing around it."

"I'll take it," Draco whispered.

. . . . . . . . . . .

_**A/N**__ - Thank you, again, to everyone who has been reading and commenting on this. Now that I've managed to get the plot outlined I've changed the category from hurt/comfort to mystery because I think it fits better there. _

_I hope everyone continues to enjoy!_


	5. Chapter 5

"_You remember anything more?" Blaise watched her but she shook her head. _

"_It's like the cotton candy. I remember just the one thing, like short scene cut out of a movie, but nothing around it."_

"_I'll take it," Draco whispered. _

The Healer was much less cheerful during this visit than he had been when she'd first met him. He frowned at all of them as they sat in his dark, cluttered office, all three of them in chairs with stained cushions and scarred wooded armrests. He expressed his opinion – not a good one – of the way they'd all gone home. She had been shaky, he insisted, and should have stayed for observation. It had been irresponsible of her to go, irresponsible of her boys to facilitate that. Finally he demanded, "How could you go home, barely an hour after you regained consciousness, with what amounted to two strangers," he demanded, "and one of them a – "

"I don't think you want to finish that thought," Hermione said, her tone very cool. "I am not interested in your opinion of our personal life histories so much as your professional assessment of my condition."

She purposefully slipped her hand into Draco's sitting in the adjacent chair in the Healer's examination room; this one is mine, she thought, and I'll not let you sit there and cast aspersions on anything or anyone that's mine. She'd already refused to put on a hospital gown, refused to send Draco and Blaise away, refused to be deferential in any way. She wasn't an invalid, and she'd be damned if she let this man, who she'd just met the day before, sit in judgment of her life, even if it was a life she couldn't remember very much of.

"Well," he smiled with a pained veneer of politeness. "Let's start with the fingers then, shall we?" He held up three and had just opened his mouth to speak again when she said, "Three. And there's no shimmer or shakiness at all. My vision seems totally normal."

"Okay." He came around his desk went through the motions of looking in her eyes and ears, listening to her breathe, then asked, "How's the general unsteadiness? Any dizziness? Vertigo?"

"Yesterday I was still very shaky on my feet when we got home. I went right to bed and when I woke up this morning all of those issues had resolved themselves." Draco squeezed her fingers and she looked at him fondly. "Plus, I'm being served the most amazing food to recover my strength."

"And any recollection of large swathes of your past?" the Healer asked and, at that, she shook her head.

"Isolated moments only, generally triggered by interaction with the person in the memory."

He frowned at that, a medical frown rather than an annoyed frown and all three of them tensed in their seats. "Well," he said, "I might have hoped for a little more progress in that area since all the other issues have cleared up but everyone recovers on their own schedule and, of course, not everyone who suffers retrograde amnesia recovers completely. And, as I believe I have mentioned, you really are barely at the first stage of recovery; I wouldn't worry until two to three weeks have passed. Keep trying to trigger memories, look through old photo albums and such, have your… um, friends here – "

"Fiancés." Hermione said the word with minor irritation and the Healer smiled awkwardly.

"Yes," he continued, "Have your, umm, blokes tell you – "

"Fiancés," she said again, this time a bit more emphatically. "We're all engaged to be married. All of us. It's a simple enough concept."

"Yes," he tried again. "Have them tell you stories of how you met, things you do together – " Blaise snickered and the Healer flushed before continuing, " – places you go. Meet with other friends, have them tell you stories. The more you can trigger your brain to remember, the better."

Hermione thanked the man, they made another appointment for three weeks out and Draco asked, with a completely serious expression, if it were okay for them to all start sleeping together again. "You said we should try to trigger memories of things we've done," he said, "but the printed aftercare instructions said she was to sleep alone. Could you clear that up for us?"

The Healer stammered and flushed and finally muttered something about using good judgment while Blaise laughed, a low sound that seemed to make the man even more uncomfortable.

"You are not nice men," Hermione hissed at them as they exited the hospital.

"This from a woman who kept repeating the word 'fiancés' knowing full well it made the man uncomfortable!" Draco snorted back.

"He deserved to be made uncomfortable," she muttered. "'…and one of them a Death Eater'." Her tone was both vicious and a remarkably good mimicry of the Healer's obvious unhappiness with Draco's existence. "Did he think you were planning on resurrecting Voldemort in our living room? Prick."

"I love you," he said, grabbing her hand and pulling her into a hug on the street. "Have I mentioned that? You don't even remember me and you're still …"

"He had no right," she muttered into his shoulder. "Your war time record is totally irrelevant to my medical issues. It was unprofessional of him to even - "

"Not," Blaise said, resting his hand on her lower back, "to be a killjoy, but Narcissa is coming down the street. Did someone tell her we were going to be here?"

"Fuck," Draco swore. "The Children's Ward Charity luncheon is today. I forgot; we should have gone out the back. Fuck!" He muttered, "I'm sorry, love," into Hermione's hair. "What's about to happen is my fault."

"Let us handle this," Blaise hissed at Hermione, pulling her away from Draco and wrapping his arm around her waist. She leaned into him and looked up, trying to read his expression. "Just… try not to say anything," he added. "Please."

Hermione glanced at Draco, who had put a falsely pleased smile on his face even as his shoulders tightened, then back at Blaise, whose fingers were digging into her hip so hard she suspected she'd end up with bruises if he didn't let up soon. Finally, she looked down the street towards a hawk-faced woman who lazily approached them with a delighted smile on her pointed face.

"Darling," she leaned in to her son to peck a kiss on first one cheek and then the other. She had her hair pulled back, was dressed from head to toe in a chic, obviously expensive, black dress and had a large, somewhat garish necklace with large stones in a fussy filigree setting sitting at her neckline.

"You're looking glorious, as always mother," Draco replied. "Is that a new necklace?"

"No," she said. "It's one of the Malfoy heirlooms. It will go to your wife." She looked at Hermione and added, "Your _suitable_ wife."

Hermione felt Blaise's fingers grind into her with even more force and eyed the necklace in question. "An older piece?" she asked, sweetly and Narcissa said, in an equally saccharine tone, "Very much so."

"Mmm." Hermione eyed it and, as Narcissa began to preen, added, "Styles do change so, don't they. What earlier generations would call lovely we now call vulgar." She paused before slipping in one more sentence. "You carry it off well."

Yes. She was definitely going to get bruises where Blaise's fingers were. She was going to make him kiss each of those bruises every day until they faded. Why was he so averse to her talking to this woman? While Draco's mother was clearly unpleasant and didn't approve of her, actually being bruised by Blaise's quest to keep her quiet seemed a bit much to tolerate.

"You don't seem to be wearing your ring," Narcissa glanced down at Hermione's hand. "Aren't having problems in paradise, I assume, since that wouldn't be possible. I hope you didn't chip that emerald; I told you it wasn't a good stone for a ring you wear every day."

"Try not to be so transparent, mother," Draco drawled. "The ring is fine but we wanted to get an inscription added to the inside of the band."

"May I ask what?"

"You can certainly ask," Draco said, "but as it's private I'm afraid I'll have to refuse to tell you. Probably better if you don't start that terribly awkward conversation but stick to a safer topic like sex or politics."

Hermione pressed herself against Blaise, trying to relieve some of the pressure of his fingers and wished this viper of a woman would just go inside to whatever unfortunate charity was saddled with her. She had begun to feel very grateful she had forgotten the arguments about the books in the living room.

"Speaking of sex and politics," the woman said, "do you ever plan to take the family seat on the Wizengamot?"

"Last I checked," Draco said, starting to sound just a tad strained, "Father was still alive, albeit in prison, and thus I'm not technically eligible. Assuming you aren't planning on bribing the guards to kill him you'll just have to wait for the sad day of his natural death to have me wield all the influence your little heart longs to see me take up. And then, of course, I'll be using it on behalf of my partners."

Hermione twitched and Blaise must have sensed she was about to open her mouth again because he ground his fingers into her and she swallowed a squawk as he said, "Draco, I hate to drag you away from this unexpected reunion, but I have things to do and so does Hermione. We can meet you at home if you would like more time to visit with your charming mother."

"Running away again?" Narcissa raised her eyebrows and Hermione knew – absolutely knew – that it was her job to protect these boys from this woman, this woman she loathed. How _dare_ she poke her sharp little jibes at…

…and then she remembered the day she'd told Draco she's be happy to date him, remembered staring this woman down in the street. Draco had edited the meeting somewhat, seemed to have left out that Narcissa had threatened to disown him if he took up with filth. She narrowed her eyes and wrenched her hip away from Blaise's clutching fingers. "Narcissa," she said, so very quietly, and the woman turned her nose up even as she looked down at the woman standing before her. "I think you should go inside to your charity work before someone drops a house on you."

"I beg your pardon?"

"I'm sorry. Muggle literary reference. It means you should leave before an unfortunate accident prevents you from ever being able to leave again."

"Oh?" Narcissa smiled, a slow, dangerous smile. "Unfortunate accidents are so… unfortunate, aren't they, Hermione?"

"Yes, indeed they are." And she and Hermione stared at one another as Draco and Blaise hovered behind them, anxious, tense, and silent.

. . . . . . . . . .

Hermione flung herself onto the couch in the living room – her living room – and started to tug her pants down.

"I don't want to complain that you seem to be taking your clothes off," Draco said, eyeing her, "but what are you doing?"

"I think Blaise left bruises," she muttered. "Look!"

Draco leaned over and looked at her hip where a row of red marks still highlighted where Blaise had been gripping her. "Fuck, Blaise," he looked up at the other man. "Were you trying to hurt her?"

"I was trying to get her to keep her mouth shut around your mother for once." Blaise sat down next to her and began to rub at the red spots. "I'm sorry," he added, looking moderately repentant at best.

"Do she and I always…?" Hermione trailed off and Draco snorted.

"Every single time you're around each other."

"I remembered something," she said, "when Narcissa and I were, err, talking." There was a pause as both men waited for her and she finally said, "You left something out in your little discussion this morning of how I agreed to date you."

Draco tensed.

"Can she actually disinherit you?" And, Hermione thought to herself, does that bother you?

At that he laughed. "Only from shit like that necklace you announced to all and sundry was vulgar. The estate's entailed."

Hermione flicked a glance at Blaise who elaborated. "She can't do anything with it. It goes to Draco no matter what. Eldest son to eldest son. His eldest son will also end up with the whole thing, even if the brat's a gormless wastrel. It's an antiquated system but that's the Malfoys for you."

"Oh." She shifted so Blaise could rub at the red marks he'd left on her hip more easily and made a very quiet purring noise as he continued to gently rub at them, a noise that had both men eyeing her. Blaise bet down and kissed her hip and she gasped at the sudden shiver that went through her. "I was," she muttered, "going to make you kiss those marks every day until the bruises fade." She inhaled as he brushed his lips across her again, this time trailing just the tip of his tongue across her skin. "Now I'm not so sure that's a good idea."

"I disagree," Blaise murmured, head still down at her hip. "It's an excellent idea, a most excellent idea indeed."

Draco sat down on her other side and Hermione sagged against him as Blaise began blowing on her skin, the cool air igniting something she wasn't sure she wanted lit but wasn't sure she didn't either. "I would have walked away from all of it for you," Draco whispered in her ear. "I don't care about the money or the political seat, only about you, only about Blaise. I didn't tell you about my mother's threats because they aren't important, not because I wanted to hide them. She has no power over me, love, no power over us. And, if you want, I will have every one of those hideous family pieces recreated and you can flaunt them all over town."

"I…" she twisted so her face was to him even as Blaise leaned a cheek on her thigh and looked up at both his partners. She pictured the necklace and grimaced. "I wish you wouldn't."

"Then I won't," Draco said, slowly bringing his hands up to her face and brushing a single tendril of hair that had escaped the twist away. "Kiss me, Hermione." It was a plea, a command, an enticement she couldn't resist and she brushed one of her own hands through his fine, pale hair and watched as his pupils began to dilate within his grey eyes. "I want you so badly," he murmured as he lowered his mouth to hers. Within moments she felt herself wilting against him, a plucked flower drooping helplessly in his arms, and he'd moved his hands to her back and was helping hold her upright. Blaise's kiss that morning, she realized, had been gentle, had been careful. He'd been worried she was going to pull away and reject him, or considerate, mayhap, of the woman who didn't know him anymore. Draco didn't bother with any such niceties. Some part of her brain that still functioned whispered 'this is what it means to be ravished, he is ravishing my mouth', she thought, but most of her had lost the ability to reason or articulate thoughts at all. There was nothing but this man holding her, tasting her, and she was whimpering against him as he wrenched himself away from her lips and began kissing hungrily down her neck, devouring her even as she offered herself up to be so devoured.

. . . . . . . . . .

_**A/N **__ - My ongoing and repeated gratitude that you all continue to read, and comment upon, my take on the memory loss trope is not less real for being endlessly repeated._

_I am, of course, playing fast and loose with retrograde amnesia but brain injuries can be weird and I'm sure if I wanted to comb the literature I'd find a case reasonably parallel to Hermione's. It's fiction; don't use it to make a medical diagnosis._

_Your reviews warm my soul on this frigid day._


	6. Chapter 6

_There was nothing but this man holding her, tasting her, and she was whimpering against him as he wrenched himself away from her lips and began kissing hungrily down her neck, devouring her even as she offered herself up to be so devoured. _

When she woke up, tucked into one side of the bed that could have slept half a dozen in comfort, she could hear them talking, their voices low in the dark room, and she lay without moving to try to learn as much as she could. She didn't know things, didn't know _enough_, but she knew they weren't telling her everything because no one ever did that. They were _hers_, of that she was wholly, absolutely sure. And that Draco could kiss so very well had certainly been made clear tonight. They were also keeping secrets and Hermione was realizing how much she disliked not knowing things. She burned to figure this out.

"I don't trust your mother," Blaise was saying, and Draco laughed, a bitter sound.

"No one with any sense does."

"No," Blaise sounded emphatic. "I don't trust her about Hermione."

"What do you mean?" A rustle, a shift in the sheets as one man moved, and the noise was loud in the dark night and she used it as a cover to roll, just a little, just enough so her ear wasn't pressed down into the pillow, and then she could hear them more clearly.

"She knows that threat to disinherit you is empty, why she thought that would have any effect on you is beyond me. Maybe she's losing her touch, which seems unlikely. Maybe she thought it would be enough to remind you of your theoretical duty to your oh-so-pure blood and get you to just set Hermione up like a good little mistress in a flat with a carte blanche; that would be acceptable. But proposal? To a mud – "

"Don't say it." Draco cut the other man off.

"It's the way she thinks."

"I don't care." Draco's voice was low and vicious. "No one calls her that. Not anymore."

"You don't have to protect her from me." She heard Draco snort at that and someone, Blaise she assumed, reached over and stroked her hair very lightly. "You don't, and you know it. But you might have to protect her from your mother."

There was a long pause and Hermione tried to lay as still and silent as possible. "What do you mean?" Draco finally asked.

"Hermione was just being herself with that snippy comment about unfortunate accidents and someone dropping a house, it didn't mean anything, but your mother? When Hermione _just had_ an unfortunate accident? She knows something, or did something, or got an idea and plans to do something."

"I can't kill my mother," Draco said, his tone very flat. It sounded like a line repeated from an old argument.

"I could." And that seemed a bit like an off-hand comment but Hermione was very sure Blaise meant it and continued to wonder, aside from their obvious adoration of her, who were these men with whom she lived; what did they do, what did they hide. "If she had anything to do with that fall down the stairs," Blaise was continuing, "I might."

"Blaise." Draco's voice was laced with warning. "We should discuss this when we're alone."

There was silence after that, and she had almost drifted off when she felt an arm wrap around her. She rolled over towards the man, her dark angel, turning within his embrace, and resting herself against him, letting the warmth of his body soak into her as she inhaled the comforting scent of his skin. "Love you," she murmured into him.

"I always know when you're awake," he whispered, his lips right at her ear. "I know you don't remember this, so I'll just tell you to be fair, something I'm not all that often. You'll never out-sneak me, you just don't have it in you. Out-stubborn me, yes, but you'll never fool me." His arm tightened around her and she tucked her chin a bit and kept her eyes closed as he laughed, very quietly. "And I love you."

She probably, she thought, shouldn't feel as safe as she does in the arms of a man who was just talking about murder, was just talking about murdering someone for her. "Still have to try," she said, the words almost lost in the bedclothes.

"Sleep, Hermione," he said, still murmuring into her ear, this seemingly meant for her alone. "In the morning we can pretend you didn't overhear that little conversation if you like, or we can not, but sleep because we're going out to meet some of your ridiculously righteous friends and see if they can trigger more memories for you. I do want you to know everything, remember everything, and unfortunately that means hauling you over to Potter's place."

"I shouldn't love you, should I?"

"Probably not, but it's too late now." And his arms tightened again and she had to push away a little bit to feel comfortable before, with her head tucked up against his arms and her feet tangled up with his, she fell back into sleep.

. . . . . . . . . .

In the morning Blaise was gone and when she opened her eyes Draco was watching her from across the bed.

"The way you two watch me sleep is weird," she muttered. "Every time I wake up one of you is staring at me. Did you do this before I fell down the stairs and lost my mind?"

He held out a hand and she scootched over, rumpling up sheets and blankets until she had to yank herself free of them. He laughed as she muttered an empty curse before turning her back to him and, while feeling him press along the length of her spine, feeling his breath on her neck, she settled herself against him. "I don't think we used to watch you like this, no," Draco said. "I suspect we're both still a little worried you'll stop breathing or you'll wake up and start to run from us as fast as you can."

"That might," she said, "be a sensible choice."

"But you won't, right?"

"No," she admitted, then grinned even though he couldn't see it. "Even though that sleep-watching thing is downright creepy." She paused before adding, "Thank you for sharing the bed last night. It makes me feel, I don't know, loved? safer? to have you both there. I know the aftercare instructions – "

"You asked us to get into bed with you and you thought for one moment we would say no?" Draco kissed the back of her neck and she felt shivers run down her body. "Mine," he whispered. "You're mine, and I'll wait for as long as it takes for you to remember that, as long as it takes for you to be comfortable with me again, won't push you any further than you want to go, but I'm not going to turn down any actual invitations you extend to me."

"Kiss me again," she whispered, and the words were barely across her lips when he'd rolled her onto her back and brushed her hair out of her face. He began more slowly this time, nuzzling her nose and layering light kisses along the line of her jaw before turning his attention to her mouth. Morning stubble rubbed against her face as he kissed her, as he slipped his tongue into her mouth, tasted her, began, again, to simply consume her. She found herself moaning against his mouth, had her hands in his hair, yanking him more closely to her.

He laughed, pleased but, as she tugged the t-shirt she'd worn to bed off he murmured, "Are you sure, love? Last night aside, you barely know me."

"I know you," she whispered. "Maybe not every detail, maybe not every day we've had together, but I know you, I do. I know you." She pulled him on to her, then, felt him against her. "Does the invitation have to be engraved?" she asked when he continued to hesitate and at that he began to shed his own, minimal, clothing, watching her face the whole time.

"No," he ran his hands over her skin, still watching her, waiting, she supposed, for more explicit permission to continue.

"Then help me to learn you again, even more thoroughly."

He did, and if no old memories returned, well, they were both happy enough to make new ones.

. . . . . . . . . .

She stood at the bookshelf, her truly glorious wall of books, and ran her fingers along the spines, stopping to pull one out every few books. Some of them she couldn't remember ever reading, some she knew the content but when she'd read them was a mystery. Some, though, some she'd pull out and it was as though they were doors into her mind, opening memories of sitting on the beach, or in a window seat, or curled up in a chair, book in hand. Like everything else, the memories stayed fragmented, isolated. I want _context_ she thought in frustration. I don't want my life to be this abstract mosaic.

She could tell Blaise was watching her from the window seat, his brown eyes steady and calm. "I'm not going to fall over, you know," she said, pulling out another book. She'd read this one at school, in her common room by the fire. Flashes of things, some ginger boy telling her not to be such a bookworm, to come out and watch him play Quidditch instead. She shook her head "The physical disorientation is totally gone."

"I just like watching you," he said and she felt herself flush.

"Where's Draco," she asked without turning and Blaise said, with a snort, "Still in the shower, hedonist that he is."

"How dangerous are you," she said, very quietly, and she could hear him shift behind her.

"To you? Not at all. Turn around, love," he requested, or maybe ordered, and when she did, the book still in her hand, he was propped up in the window, framed by the wall, languid and lithe and very still.

"What do you do, Blaise?" She tried again. "Who are you?"

"I'm a man who loves you very much," he said. "As to what I do, neither Draco nor I are burdened with the need to make a living. I read a bit. I walk through the streets and enjoy the city. I have friends I visit. I've been known to gamble now and then, though never to excess. I enjoy travel and go to other cities and walk and gamble there when London gets dull. I'm a pureblood, magical aristocrat, dear one. We're creatures of indulgent pleasure. I'm trying to turn you into one as well."

"You lie badly," she said, watching him and he laughed.

"I lie very well when I want to but, as it happens, every single word I just said is true."

"But deceptive," she said and he shrugged. "How about Draco," she asked, studying his face, his eyes. "Does he read and walk and gamble and do nothing of any import as well?"

"Draco and I have found," Blaise said, an idle tone, "that we make a good team in any number of ways. We enjoy one another's company."

She crossed over to him and he reached out and pulled her close. "Try not to worry about me. Whatever else I am, I'm yours."

"You're dangerous," she repeated in a whisper and he shrugged, a gesture that spoke of lazy unconcern but his eyes never wavered as they watched her face. "I'm a wizard, Hermione. That makes me dangerous by definition, no matter what veneer of respectability most people shellac over their power. You're no bit of milquetoast yourself." He looked, then, over her shoulder at a pile of papers he'd left on a table. "I pulled tales of your war exploits. Research who you are, love."

She turned towards the papers but before she could pick one up she heard him add, "Dangerous is different than evil, Hermione." Then he slipped out of the seat and, as a panther might, glided out of the room, the tail that wasn't there flicking as he left.

. . . . . . . . . .

Draco watched her from the doorway, bent down over papers and books, reading about herself. Blaise was standing behind him, one hand on his shoulder, the other shoved into a pocket. Draco knew that posture; it was almost unconscious, now, but Blaise's hand was on his wand and that casual stance hid a man ready to react instantly. He was on alert, here in their own home.

"She heard me last night," he'd said when he'd walked into the bath, tossing a towel at the blond man and Draco, standing there, naked and dripping, had raised his eyebrows, supercilious expression firmly in place, and said, "I thought you were the one who always knew when she was faking sleep."

"I knew," Blaise had said. "I wanted her to hear."

"You want her to know? All of it?"

Blaise had shrugged. "I'd prefer it, yes. Eventually. There has to be some good that comes out of this bloody disaster. Not having to hide who I am from her would be a benefit I'd be happy to reap even if I can't tell her yet, can't tell her without... For now, just knowing I'm not merely a dandy is enough to test, to see how she reacts. Can she accept me as," he paused, "as not so lily white."

"Puts her at risk, knowing about you."

"She was always at risk anyway."

"Remind me why I tolerate your bullshite."

"Because I had her first. Because you know why I'm doing it and, last time I checked, you approved, approved enough to be both camouflage and help." Blaise had grinned and leaned forward to brush his lips over Draco's shoulder. "Because you rather adore me." The blond had caught his mouth in a kiss and they'd taken a moment to savor one another before Blaise had muttered, "Get dressed; we have to take her to see those prats soon and we don't have time for this."

"Tease," Draco had said and both had laughed until Draco had added, "What if she can't accept it? What do you plan to do then?"

Now they stood, watching the woman go through one story of who she was, what she'd done, after another. "I know you're there," she said, after a bit. "It's a bit off-putting that you're just standing there, in the hall, watching me read newspaper clippings."

"Didn't want to intrude," Draco said, walking up behind her and resting his chin on her head. "Anything seem familiar?"

"Just… fragments," she admitted, reaching up towards him, taking his hand in hers. "Still. I know I'm best friends with two boys – not you – and I know their names but I can't summon up any sense of them as people that I actually know even though I've read about the heroics we apparently managed."

Blaise started to laugh as he settled himself back down into his window seat. "You didn't apparently manage them, love, you absolutely managed them. You're a genuine hero, all three of you are. Noble. Brave. Foolhardy as hell. Rushing in where angels fear to tread and all that."

"What do they think of you?" she asked and Draco sighed.

"Potter and Weasley, your dear friends and partners in heroics, tolerate us. At best." He slipped into the seat next to her and pulled her up against him. She smiled as she laid her cheek up against his shoulder and inhaled that salty, clean smell that was his.

"They'll blame us for this," Blaise muttered. "Today should be extraordinarily unpleasant. I anticipate yelling and renewals of their repeated suggestions that you should leave us."

She looked at Blaise. "Why don't they like you?" Her words were very quiet but he tensed anyway.

"It's more me," Draco said, looking over at Blaise, who was quite decidedly not looking back. "They were fine - well, reasonably fine - with you and Blaise but one could say Potter and I were quite the rivals in school, by which I mean he hated me and the feeling was more than mutual. Having you invite me into your relationship was a bit much for him, or Weasley, to handle."

"They're usually civil," Blaise said. "But we didn't tell them you were hurt so…"

"They'll yell," Draco finished the thought. "Though, honestly, the idea we'd track down all your school friends, even your best school friends, to tell them you were hurt is bizarre, particularly given how neither Blaise nor I are exactly close to them. We were a little occupied with being worried you'd never regain consciousness, plus, sleeping in those chairs was uncomfortable and we were both a little sleep deprived."

"Typical of them." Blaise's tone was still mired in hostility. "The world is supposed to revolve around those two and does, at least in their itty bitty brains." It was funny, and rather adorable, Hermione thought, to see him transform from the confident man he'd been earlier to this sullen near-boy. She would never have expected this jealousy from him; Draco's dismissive irritation didn't surprise her nearly as much. Both mine, she thought, mine to love, mine to care for.

"I don't think I want people yelling at you," Hermione looked back down at the things she'd been reading. "Not even these people. Whoever they are."

. . . . . . . . . .

_**A/N - **__ Thank you all, again, for giving me the gift of your time and your eyes in reading this. I hope it continues to entertain and intrigue. _

_(Mcgonagallssass – don't worry. I've got the whole story arc mapped out and am currently drafting chapter 9. There's no stopping. Slowing, at some point, I'm sure, but no stopping.)_


	7. Chapter 7

"_I don't think I want people yelling at you," Hermione looked back down at the things she'd been reading. "Not even these people. Whoever they are."_

Hermione had expected to have some kind of emotional recognition of these boys – men now, she supposed – who had apparently been her best friends for years. That was how this seemed to work; she'd known she loathed Narcissa at first glance, known she loved Draco and Blaise shortly after waking up to them. However her brain stored memories, however those memories had been shaken loose of their moorings, the emotional connection she felt to people seemed to be intact.

She hadn't expected to immediately find them both irritating.

Oh, she _liked_ them. She knew that. She trusted them absolutely and implicitly and utterly and any number of other –ly words; she knew that too.

They just grated on her.

She, Draco and Blaise had barely entered the fairly unpleasant and dark townhouse that the one named Harry lived in, certainly hadn't sat down or been offered any tea, when the one named Ron was hissing at her boys. "She lay in the hospital for two days and you didn't tell us," he seethed. "How could you? We should have been there." He turned to her, "We would have been there, 'Mione. I swear. Neither of us would have left your side for a moment if we'd known you were hurt." Peering back over her shoulder towards Blaise and Draco he continued, "This is your fault, you somehow let this happen. How could she just fall down the stairs by accident? I will never, ever believe –"

That was when she interrupted him.

"We didn't need you at the hospital," she said and watched his jaw drop open. His mouth actually hung open; it was startlingly unattractive. "Blaise and Draco never left me, and, really, what would you have done that they couldn't do?"

"But… we're your best friends, 'Mione," he protested. "I should have been there."

"I was _unconscious_," she said. "What would you have done? Sat around with Draco and Blaise and talked about whatever you four have in common? Offered your suggestions to the Healer on my treatment?" She heard Draco snort behind her. Oh, this was going just brilliantly; she could feel her head start to pound and she wasn't even seated yet. Posturing men on every side of me, she thought.

"We should have been there," Ron said again, his face reddening and his throat bobbing as he swallowed. "More than them. We're the ones who really care about you, always have, not these snakes." The last was hissed at Blaise and Draco. "He watched you be _tortured, _Hermione. He stood there while I begged them to take me instead and watched his crazy aunt cut that word into your arm. I've never understood how you could…"

"And isn't that a lovely memory to try to help her recall," Blaise snapped, cutting the man off. "Did you not read the note I sent? Her Healer wants her to talk to friends about happy things, have you worthless sots tell her pleasant stories of your adventures together, assuming there even are any. But no, you go right to…"

"Does she even know what she endured at Malfoy's hands? At the hands of his delightful family? Can she even make an informed choice about whether she wants to stay with you?"

"I know," Hermione said, but the two of them went on, talking over her while Draco and Harry glared at one another with obvious, silent loathing. She looked around the hall. Ugly wall paper, curtains covering what she assumed were portraits and, she noted with some disgust, enough dirt where the wall met the wooden floor it was clear no one had cleaned in a long time. And there was something else, something vile and uncomfortable that oozed out of the woodwork like sap.

"Still singing that same old tune, Weasley? She loves us, as much as that sticks in your craw. She's not going anywhere. She said 'yes' as you might recall; we're getting married." Blaise's voice was getting louder in the close hall and Ron matched his volume.

"Maybe now she will, maybe falling down the stairs will have knocked some sense into her. You two are liars, nothing but rich, arrogant liars and – "

"I," Blaise was getting even louder, "have never lied to Hermione in my life. Not once. Can you claim that? I have never hurt her, never left her in the woods, never broken her heart for some daft bint who could barely spell her own name."

"You tricked her, then," Ron shouted and Hermione began to rub at her head, which had started to feel like someone was shoving a spike into just one temple. "Tricked her into loving you, and then you started to share her with Malfoy like some kind of… of dirty book you'd pass around." Hermione stiffened at that. Was that what this man, this childhood friend, really thought of her? That she would let herself be handed back and forth like a magazine passed from hand to hand in a boy's dormitory? That was just a vile assumption.

He was still ranting on. "And you let her fall down those stairs and if that doesn't count as hurting her – "

"Stop." Hermione said. Then again, her voice rising so she could be heard, "Stop." She stepped towards him and the ginger man retreated back further into the passage; she suspected he knew he'd crossed a line. "Do you know what Blaise did when I woke up? The first thing he did? He held my hand and helped me to the shower. Draco went and found clean clothes for me. They took me home, they took care of me. They brought me here to see you, as much as their dislike of you seems fairly justified. And you? You've stood in a hallway and yelled at me, yelled at them, for not catering to your need to be put first. You've implied… wretched things about our relationship. Things I'm going to pretend I didn't hear because if you meant them then that's unforgivable. Really and truly unforgivable. They love me, and I love them, and there are very _very_ few things I'm sure of right now but that's one of them. I'm becoming equally sure of at least one more thing though." She realized she'd balled her hands into fists as she glared at the man and very carefully made herself relax them.

"If you yell at them again," she said, "or in any way behave with anything other than perfect graciousness, I will have them take me home and to hell with the Healer's instructions to meet with you to see if interacting with you would trigger any of my missing memories. Maybe remembering you is something I can do without."

"Hermione," Harry finally spoke, and she remembered his voice. I remember you, she thought, at least a little. It was a shock that ran through her; bits and pieces of him talking to her, isolated clips from years of friendship, that all fell into place at once.

Oblivious to her sudden stillness Harry was going on, "Let's go sit down. I think we're just upset because we've been worried about you and it's coming out badly; you know Ron and how impulsive he is. It was a shock to hear you'd been hurt. I'd never have thought of you as someone who'd take a tumble down stairs, especially after navigating all those staircases at school for years."

She glanced back at Blaise and Draco, who were both regarding her with rather smug expressions. Prats, she thought to herself, and wasn't even sure which pair of men she was referring to.

The sitting room was just as grim as the entry hall. Heavy wood, gloomy portraits, shelves of books that felt dirty, even from where she was sitting. She looked around, waiting to see if anything would seem familiar but all it did was make her grateful for her own house. This place looked like a shrine to dark magic clichés; how could this friend of hers live here?

Harry and Ron told her stories for two hours over tea and biscuits and cheap chocolate as the sun set and the room got darker; by the time they were done she wanted nothing more than to huddle into Blaise. He might be dangerous – was clearly dangerous – but this house made her constantly look at shadows that seemed wrong and at things that she thought she glimpsed that disappeared when she looked directly at them. She'd take his dangerousness and his love over whatever slithered in the wallpaper here.

She hated this house.

She got back flickers of memories as she talked to them. Ron seemed pleased she remembered him asking her to go watch him play Quidditch, Harry seemed pleased she remembered a trip they'd taken to his parents' grave. She felt like she had a good sense of how they'd met, of why she trusted them the way she did. They'd had adventures, some sweet, most, it seemed, not at all. Some she even really remembered when they talked about them. She knew she liked both of them, loved them even. She just didn't want to spend any time with them, not really; there was too much darkness in their pasts to bear and too much tension in their present; certainly, no matter what, never again would she enter this house. She could, she supposed, be talked into outings in cheerful, neutral places where things didn't lurk quite so ominously.

"I hate that house," was the first thing she said when they left and Draco laughed.

"It should be mine," he said, taking her hand in his. "Aren't you glad it's not?"

"Why?"

"Another entailed estate," Blaise said, "and dear Narcissa's the last member of the original family so it should be hers, or Draco's. A cousin left it to Harry and no one's ever bothered to contest the will."

"Who'd want it?" Draco said with a grimace. "You'd think he'd at least get rid of all the dark artifacts floating around that place."

"You okay, little lion of mine?" Blaise asked, looking at her, and she shrugged, still feeling the urge to fling herself into his arms and never let go.

"That place just gave me an awful feeling." And, she thought, the yelling didn't help. The accusation she was not loved but just used by the two men at her side didn't help. There'd been a lot of not helping over the past few hours. If those two men had been her best friends as an adolescent she had to assume she'd been tremendously socially awkward because they certainly both were; after spending the last few days – all of her conscious life, really, she thought with some bitterness – in the company of the two cunning, sophisticates currently walking at her side she couldn't help but notice the contrast between them and her old friends.

"You lived in it during the war for a bit," Draco was saying and she forced herself to focus on him. "Even if you don't remember I doubt the emotional resonance is exactly pleasant."

"The shadows move," she corrected. "And the whole place feels slimy."

"Potter really needs to clean that place out," he muttered. "If it were anyone else the Ministry would make him but saint Potter gets a pass on not getting rid of all that filth."

"Why hasn't he," she asked and he rolled his eyes.

"He's conflated the possessions with the man who left them to him, I assume." He let go of her hand and wrapped his arm tightly around her, pulling her against him and made what was an obvious, but still welcome, subject change. "Either of you have a dinner preference?"

"What do I like," she asked him, with a bit of a grin, eager to chase away her lingering shudders, and Draco and Blaise looked at one another, come to some silent agreement, and, without answering, had her whisked off to a tiny restaurant.

The food was excellent but she watched both men watch her with quiet concern as she drank the good wine – well, she assumed it was good wine. Blaise had had some whispered conversation with a sommelier that seemed to impress the man and the bottle they'd been presented with had made Draco blink.

"I thought we should celebrate," Blaise had said with a shrug. "We're out of the hospital _and_ out of Potter's lovely house."

"Does he ever clean?" Hermione had muttered and both men had laughed. Now, over that wine and finished dinners, there they were doing that watching thing, where they looked at her as though she might shatter at any moment.

"Hermione," Draco said at last, "Why did that house bother you so much?"

"It was… slimy," she said with a frown. "Didn't it bother you?"

"No," Draco drew the word out. "And it's never bothered you before either."

"It's filled with dark artifacts, don't mistake our meaning," Blaise leaned forward as he spoke. "The Blacks – Draco's mother's family – didn't have any problems with dark magic. Books, tools, everything was fine with them. Most people find the current political views on what makes something dark a tad, well, conservative – "

"Though given the war hardly surprising," Draco interrupted.

"True," Blaise conceded, "and I'm not one to argue. But the Blacks – Malfoys too - they embraced that stuff. Sought it out. And it rankles in ways I have a hard time expressing that your friend can keep all that filth in his house and no one says boo because he's the chosen one. But, love, it's never bothered you before. The dirt, yes. The clutter and the crusted plates on every surface? Absolutely. Every time you come home after visiting them you complain about that. But you have never _ever_ mentioned shadows that move or said it was slimy or made you feel awful."

"So either Potter's picked up a bunch of new, nasty shit - " Draco said.

"Which I doubt," Blaise said, "because as much as I dislike the man personally he's not exactly the sort to start dabbling in dark magic."

"Or you're suddenly more sensitive to it," Draco finished his earlier thought. "And that worries me even if I'm not sure what it means."

Hermione frowned at them both but the conversation was cut short by a server clearing their plates, by invitations to think about dessert, by Blaise making a vague noise as he looked over the dessert menu that had been neatly tucked into his hand.

"You always get dessert, why are we even pretending you won't," Draco said and Hermione was about to protest that she didn't think she really had that much of a sweet tooth when she realized the fond look was directed not at her but at Blaise and she smiled. Afterwards, as they sat there in the candlelight drinking coffee and sharing a bread pudding – 'three forks' Draco had said when they ordered it, though she'd noticed she managed to snag by far the smallest portion – Hermione leaned back and said, "Draco, what do you do?"

He cocked his head to the side and looked at her, quizzically. "Do?" he asked.

"All day, on the days you aren't staring at my body in a hospital bed. What do you _do_?"

"Well," he said with a pleasant smile, "Neither Blaise nor I are burdened with the need to make a living. I visit friends, I read. I walk through the streets and enjoy the city. I've been known to gamble now and then, though never to excess. We travel and go to other cities and I walk and gamble there when London gets dull. I'm a pureblood, magical aristocrat, nothing but decadent and pleasure-seeking."

"Try again," she said, and at his look she added, "That is, almost word for word, what Blaise said when I asked him. If you want to sound believable you should have different answers. What, Draco, do you do?"

"Love you," he said, holding the last forkful of dessert across the table and towards her. "What I do is love you."

She put her mouth over the fork and swallowed the sweet, licked her lips as both men avidly watched her. Then she said, "What are you hiding?"

. . . . . . . . . .

_**A/N – Thank you, one and all, for continuing to read along on this. Your views and thoughts and feedback brighten up my day.**_

_**Someone asked if I were still doing the Birthday Drabbles (explanation on profile.) Yes, so long as people ask me :) **_

_I should have responded to all the logged in reviews view PM. If I missed you, Mea Culpa; I shall blame that I was traveling, and not the pleasant kind of travel, all weekend. A quick response to the guest reviews: Guest 1 (Thank you. Blaise is our mystery boy, isn't he?) Guest 2 (I hope the confrontation with Ron and Harry didn't disappoint. _


	8. Chapter 8

"_Try again," she said, and at his look she added, "That is, almost word for word, what Blaise said when I asked him. If you want to sound believable you should have different answers. What, Draco, do you do?"_

"_Love you," he said, holding the last forkful of dessert across the table and towards her. "What I do is love you." _

_She put her mouth over the fork and swallowed the sweet, licked her lips as both men avidly watched her. Then she said, "What are you hiding?"_

"Did I really fall down those stairs," she asked then, in the silence of their not answering her, "or was I pushed? Or cursed?"

She thought the question was reasonable but the way both men stared at her in dismay suggested maybe it wasn't. Or, worse, maybe it was.

"I think I'm offended," Blaise put his fork down and looked at her. And he did appear actually put out. "I thought you knew how I felt, I thought you knew how _you_ felt, even if you couldn't remember why or how. You really think I would push you down the stairs? Curse you?"

"I didn't ask if _you _pushed me," she said, watching him and he relaxed a bit, as did Draco. "Just…. Harry was right. School was nothing but stairs. How could I have fallen down like that?"

"You remember the stairs?" Draco asked. "You remember school? More is coming back?"

She made a face at him. Really, now was not the time to hassle her about memories and it wasn't like she hadn't been looking at photos and hearing stories about her life all day. She knew the bloody school had stairs. She could recite the name of every headmaster, ever. She even knew the last password to her old dormitory. She just didn't remember actually walking on the stairs, didn't remember being there personally. Sometimes he was so irritating she wanted to just…

"I hit you." She looked at him and he touched his nose, almost without thinking. "Why did I hit you?"

"No context again?" Blaise asked, and she nodded, starting at Draco's nose. "Because he was being an utter arse and he deserved it."

"I'm sorry," she said, looking down at her hand then back up at his nose. "I… I don't remember."

"You don't need to apologize," Draco muttered, looking embarrassed. "Trust me."

"Having her forget your past isn't wholly awful, is it," Blaise teased and she looked from one to the other before Draco said, sounding exasperated, "I'd rather she remembered for herself but, yes, since we're on the subject, I was a horrid brat at fourteen. You were no prize yourself, Blaise. Don't make me bring up the incident that year with the girl's shower room and your sudden interest in optics."

Hermione watched Blaise turn a dull shade of red and she began to grin as Draco, catching her eye, drawled, "Oh yes. Apparently strategically placed mirrors were meant to study whether repeated reflections suffered a degradation in image quality – "

"Let's go," Blaise tossed his napkin on the table and made a quick gesture at the waitress who'd been managing the delicate art of unobtrusive hovering with a grace that suggested to Hermione that this little restaurant was not cheap; her own menu hadn't listed prices. Quick words were exchanged, things passed, and then Blaise was holding out his arm and there was no way she could avoid rising to take it without being churlish even if being hustled out of here rather annoyed her, even if she thought his sudden interest in going home and confessing his myriad sins had more to do with embarrassment over his adolescent escapades than anything else.

"I will answer any question about who I am, about what we do, that I can," he said quietly, "but I will do it at home. I assure you, deceiving you is not my intention, nor Draco's, even if things are not as simple and transparent as you might like."

When they made it home Draco didn't even ask whether anyone wanted anything, just opened a bottle of what appeared to be very good scotch and poured out three tumblers, neat. "Here," he said, handing her one. "I can only assume we'll all want this by the time you're done with your inquisition."

Hermione settled into their lovely sofa, waiting to see if either of them would actually sit with her. They didn't. Draco leaned up against the wall, his eyes guarded for the first time since she'd met him in the hospital room. Blaise poured himself into an armchair and looked wholly the bored aristocrat, leaning on one hand as though he couldn't even muster the energy to sit upright, his drink already abandoned on a table. He was summoning that pose, she realized, that pretense of being far too fatigued with whatever was about to happen to even be able to bother with any concern, to protect himself. From her.

"What do you do?" she asked again and he sighed.

"I can't tell you," he said. "Not really. Not yet."

"Are you a Death Eater," she asked, trying to keep her tone neutral. "Or maybe a sympathizer? Some kind of blood purity radical?"

He looked offended again but, under that, there was something. She wasn't right, she thought, but she was close. Closer than he liked. "I'm getting married to you," was all he said, "I love _you._ I don't think the blood purists would even let me in the door."

"Pity, that," Draco muttered. "That could have been useful."

"Draco," Blaise said warningly and the blond closed his mouth with a mulish scowl.

"Can I trust you? Either of you?" The question seemed wrong, it wasn't quite what she meant. She knew she could trust them, she just wasn't quite sure what to ask, how to find out what she wanted to know.

Blaise picked his head off his hand and leaned forward. "I would kill anyone who hurt you. I would let the world burn if that's what it took to protect you. I sat at your bedside for days, I took you to that horrible house with those wanker friends of yours because that's what you needed. I would, and will, do anything for you. Yes, you can trust me."

"Yes," was all Draco said, with no explanation or further detail. His mouth was pressed into a tight line and, while she'd been questioning Blaise, he'd downed a substantial portion of his drink.

"Did I fall down the stairs by accident?"

Blaise looked at her, flicked a glance up at Draco before looking back at her and saying, "I'm not sure."

It took her a moment to think about that. There were all kinds of implications in even the possibility that it hadn't been an accident. "Should I be scared of you?"

"No." The offended look again.

"Should anyone?"

At that Blaise smiled and she could almost picture a tail flicking again as he regarded her with steady, feral grace. "Yes."

"Who?"

"Back to the things I can't tell you quite yet."

She looked up at Draco. "Can you tell me?"

He snorted but had started to relax a little, his posture less deliberately casual and more amused, more actually pleased with this conversation.

"What do you do, Draco?"

He smirked at her, actually smirked, and she felt a smile tug at her mouth. He was such a monumental pain when he wanted to be difficult, that she remembered. "Travel with Blaise. Travel with you, if I can talk you into it. So far I've spectacularly failed at my attempt to convince you of the value of an indolent life but my hope in that matter remains undying."

"Why do I think this travel is less leisurely than you'd have people believe?" She was tired, she thought, and she had nothing but these two men and some old school chum in a house she never really wanted to see again. Why did there have to be secrets, secrets Blaise wouldn't tell her, secrets Draco was keeping? What did it have to be complicated?

"It's absolutely leisurely for me," Draco said, smirk still in place even as he widened his eyes in an expression of deliberate innocence. "Let me show you the delights of the world, love. Quaint markets filled with old book sellers, their wares spread out on rickety tables, food in filthy stalls where you don't ask too many questions because the flavors are the best you've ever had; come with us and you and I will let Blaise navigate his tedious international friendships while we…"

She cut him off. "Where do you both go next?"

Blaise shrugged. "I tend to be… spontaneous… in my travel."

"And you want me to go with you?"

"I would love for you to come with me," he said and what got her, what finally got her wasn't the charm Draco had been laying on, wasn't the way they'd both been so offended at the idea she didn't trust them – though she did, she _did_ – it was the way Blaise smiled, a sad little smile. He had, she'd told him, a perfect smile and that was when it had been colored with his rather enchanting arrogance. Now, with that smile stripped down to just this forlorn admission he could have asked her anything and she would have said yes.

"I understand," she said, "that people generally consider travel broadening."

Draco smiled, an expression that wasn't forlorn at all. He knew they'd won whatever battle the three of them had been having. "I've heard that said."

"You two are hiding something," she said, still frustrated, "and I want to know what it is."

Draco set his drink down on a table and stalked over to her. "Yes," he said, squatting down in front of her. "But we were hiding it before your accident, and hiding it far more thoroughly."

"The accident that might not have been an accident."

"That might not have been an accident," he agreed. "Though if it weren't…" he trailed off.

"If it weren't," Blaise said, his tone falsely idle and lazy, "I'll take care of it." He directed a quick look at Draco, who ignored him. "No matter who's responsible."

. . . . . . . . . .

After Hermione went upstairs, ostensibly to shower but really to get away from all the undercurrents that moved around the things people wouldn't - claimed they couldn't - tell her, Draco and Blaise sighed and sank back into their respective seats.

"Well, how long do you think we have?" Blaise asked, rubbing at his temples.

"Before she pushes and nags and researches and investigates and figures it out?" Draco reached out and took her untouched drink and swallowed a generous portion. "Not nearly long enough. Did you see the little eyelash flutter when you told her you weren't a blood purist?"

"Yes."

"So she's even got a direction to research in. It certainly didn't take her very long to get from 'hey, Blaise is dangerous' to asking targeted questions. Less than one day, Blaise. And now you're stuck because you're going to have to tell her or she'll work to figure it out on her own."

"I can't have her asking questions," Blaise muttered, and buried his face in his hands. "If she approached the wrong person it would be bloody suicide."

"You could obliviate her" Draco noted, his tone almost neutral.

"Can't," Blaise said, not looking up. "Aside from it being such a huge betrayal of trust I don't know what that would do to her with her brain in pieces like this."

"It was your brilliant idea to reveal your secrets," Draco said, still carefully keeping his tone flat. "She's already figured out quite a bit more than that you're not just a - what did you call yourself – a dandy? Can't you just tell her all of it?"

"If I did without getting it cleared, and anyone found out, we'd _all_ be oblivated," Blaise said, "and you know it so don't act like some ridiculous naïf. And that's if the so-called good guys found out."

"Then bloody well get the permission you need, something you should have done before you decided to start revealing yourself," Draco said, "because sooner or later she'll head over to visit Harry, no matter what she thinks of that house, and start asking him questions. Can you imagine?"

Blaise shuddered. "I'd rather not. All that horrid, self-righteous virtue tromping all over the place? His world is black and white and you know which category he thinks he's in."

"And which one we're in," Draco muttered. He paused, then said, "While we're talking about the precious chosen one, I really am worried about her reaction to that house; I'm going to go make nice to my mother to get into the library at the Manor and see if I can find any references to sudden dark magic sensitivity."

Blaise nodded. "I was just so damn relieved she was okay, and so… I wasn't planning ahead properly. I'm sorry."

"Get that permission, Blaise," Draco said, and the other man nodded again.

. . . . . . . . . .

When Blaise walked into their room she was standing by the dresser wrapped in a robe and holding a pink chiffon and ribbon concoction. "You had been gone," she said and he caught his breath and crossed the room until he was right behind her. "I'd missed you so much and thought I'd welcome you home by wearing this ridiculous bit of lingerie and then I couldn't figure out how to get it on and I was so embarrassed and angry and you took it out of my hand and said - "

"I said maybe we should stick to sex that didn't require elaborate costuming," he whispered.

"We weren't here," she went on. "We were in some other room, smaller. The windows were different."

"My flat," he nodded, "Before we let Draco loose on the real estate market, before Draco was even with us, you spent most of your time at my flat because it had better hot water."

"I was so frustrated I couldn't figure out how to get it on," Hermione turned to him, the offending garment still in her hands. "And you couldn't stop laughing even as you were kissing me and telling me how much you'd missed me too."

"What else do you remember?" he asked, taking the lingerie away from her and tossing it down.

"I said I loved you," she said, watching him close his eyes and start to murmur what, in any other man, she would have thought was a prayer of thanksgiving. "I hadn't before that."

"No," he said, swallowing hard. "You'd said you adored me, you'd said a lot of things, but never that you loved me. It… I'm so glad you remember that. So glad." His voice shook a little on the last words.

"I hate that house," she muttered and he opened his eyes and looked at her again.

"I might get whiplash from that conversational shift," he said, self-control back in place. "Though I agree with you about the house. Of course, unlike you, I don't particularly care for the inhabitant, noble as he may be, so I'm biased."

"The whole time we were there I wanted to crawl into your lap and have you protect me from whatever's going on in that place," she continued, her confession startling a look of worry from him, one he quickly hid.

"Draco would be a better choice for that," was all he said, pulling her into a hug. "His family always had a bit of a thing for dark magic."

"My point," she said, nestled against him and savoring that feel of safety. Even talking about that house had made her feel chilled again. " - is that I know you're dangerous and I know you're hiding something and want to know what it is, but you're also the man who can make a frankly humiliating lingerie debacle okay and I trusted you in that awful house. Whatever's going on, whatever you're not telling me, I trust you." She started to unbutton his shirt and he stood very still as her hands undid one closure at a time. "And I'm glad this shirt is so much less complicated than that... thing."

"Hermione," he said, and when she looked up at him he sighed. "Give me time, please. Don't go out asking people about what I do, about where I go. I swear to you I'm just trying to keep you safe."

She held her hands up against his chest and admired the contrast. "I'm so lucky to have you," she murmured. Then added, "I don't like being confused. I don't like not knowing what's going on. I don't know what I don't remember, now, and what are things I never knew. What you've both kept from me."

"I know," he said, "just… give me time. Please."

She nodded, still looking at his chest, still looking at her hands against his skin, feeling him breathe under her fingers.

"Are you sure," he asked, undoing the buttons at his shirt cuffs.

"That I'm lucky?" She grinned up at him, a cocky little smirk that made his breath audibly catch.

He ran his fingers over her hip, slipping them under the short robe. "As I recall, you wanted me to kiss the marks I accidentally left after our encounter with Narcissa, some kind of penance for holding on to you too tightly." He lowered himself down to his knees, eyes on hers. "Not that I plan to stop holding on as tightly as I can but perhaps I should do as you asked, kiss it and make it better?" His breath was warm on her skin as he waited for permission to continue, as he watched her lick her lips and shiver under her hands.

When she nodded her assent appropriate reparations for his tight grip, and perhaps a bit more, were duly made. When Draco came to bed, so much later, he smiled at the two of them, entwined and asleep.

. . . . . . . . . .

_**A/N – Thank you, as always, for reading and following and reviewing this little mystery fic of mine. Your words really do make my day. **_


	9. Chapter 9

_He ran his fingers over her hip, slipping them under the short robe. "As I recall, you wanted me to kiss the marks I accidentally left after our encounter with Narcissa, some kind of penance for holding on to you too tightly." He lowered himself down to his knees, eyes on hers. "Not that I plan to stop holding on as tightly as I can but perhaps I should do as you asked, kiss it and make it better?" His breath was warm on her skin as he waited for permission to continue, as he watched her lick her lips and shiver under her hands._

_When she nodded her assent appropriate reparations for his tight grip, and perhaps a bit more, were duly made. Draco came to bed, later, and smiled at the two of them, entwined and asleep._

Hermione woke early; sometime in the night Blaise had turned from her and now his arm was flung across Draco's chest and both men seemed asleep. She sat up and looked at them, there in the bed, beautiful, beloved and barely known and then, careful not to wake either of them, made her way to the shower; locking the door behind her she turned the water on, sat down against the wall and started to cry. She wasn't even sure why, just that the awful nightmare of not knowing herself, not knowing her life, wasn't going away, not with time, not with reading about things she'd done, not with talking to friends, not even when she had sex with the men she was engaged to.

How can you have sex with someone and still not remember them, she wondered, head down in her hands as the water poured over her. They knew her; that was certainly clear. They knew her better than she knew herself in far too many ways. They knew what food she liked, what clothes she liked, how she liked everything and all she knew was that she loved them and it just wasn't enough. All she had was bits and pieces and fragments that teased more than they enlightened. Cotton candy, a kiss in a restaurant, a ridiculous garment she couldn't even imagine herself buying much less wearing. Pink chiffon?

It's almost like I rose, fully formed, out of sea foam, she thought bitterly. I've been alive for three days, really. On the first day I woke in the hospital, discovered I had two near-husbands and came home. On the second day I met my unpleasant future mother-in-law and on the third day I visited a haunted house. What will happen today? More people who don't approve of me, of my life, of the choices I don't even remember making? More secrets?

If we are the sum of our experiences, she wondered, what am I?

She wasn't sure how long she sat before she heard the door unlock – apparently living with wizards ensured it was impossible to properly lock oneself in anywhere - and someone came into the room. She didn't turn, didn't look up until the shower door opened as well and one quite naked fair angel sat down next to her against the wall, keeping her company. Then she turned to look at him, sighed, and put her head down so her cheek was on her knee and she could watch him as he looked steadily back at her. That blond hair was soaked and sticking to his face before he spoke.

"If you're waiting for the hot water to run out you'll be here a while."

She smiled, just for a moment, then sighed and, sitting up, leaned her head against his shoulder and, almost immediately, started to cry again. Unattractive snivels turned into shaking sobs and she had her face turned into his arm and he had wrapped his arms around her and was holding on. He didn't murmur pointless reassurances, didn't tell her it would be okay. Once she'd calmed down again and was just hiccupping against him he said, "This has to be really horrible for you."

"It's hard," she whispered, her voice almost lost under the sound of the shower. "Your mother hates me, my friends hate you. You tell me how we got here but all I really have are tiny fragments of myself. How do I build a life on that?"

"It'll come back," he said.

"What if it doesn't," she pulled away and looked at him. "What if I never remember anything more than tiny snippets. What if this is it?"

"Then you don't and then it is," he said, "and we move forward from there and we make new memories. We eat meals together and travel together and roll our eyes at my awful mother together and you tell me to stop being so dramatic and I tell you books don't have the answers to everything and - "

"You make it sound so easy," she said, and he snorted.

"Nothing that involves living with Blaise is easy. Or you. Wait until we have our first fight. Last time you threw things. You threw them at my head, Hermione. You came within feet of hitting me."

"Feet?" she made a disbelieving sound. "Was I not even trying?"

"You were," he said, grinning at her, "You have terrible aim."

"Next time I'll use a wand."

"Nope." He stood up and held his hand down to her and, making a face, she took it and he pulled her up. "House rules. No magic during fights."

"But I don't remember the house rules," she pointed out.

"I just told you," he said, reaching over to turn off the water.

"But I don't remember," she said again and he turned to look at her, obviously afraid, now, that she was losing new memories too only to be confronted with the smirk she couldn't quite contain. "What was that? Boys don't get to use magic in fights?"

"Uh huh." He took two steps towards her in that giant shower and had her pressed up against the wall they'd just been leaning on. "Brat."

"Git," she said with a sniff and then he was pushing a mass of wet hair out of her face and kissing her on the forehead. She let herself stand there, pressed against him for several moments. "This is so hard," she said, her eyes closed. "I keep waiting for it to get easy, I keep waiting to remember everything, to remember who I am, and it seems like it just gets harder. Now I still don't remember and maybe I didn't fall by accident and you're both keeping secrets and I don't know what to do."

He sighed and tugged her into his arms and they stood there in the shower as the heat crept out. "You're Hermione Granger," he said at last, "brilliant, stubborn, bossy as hell and unstoppable when you decide to do something which, let me tell you, isn't the easiest trait to live with. You're fierce in your defense of people you love, even when you can barely remember them. You love books and cats and Blaise and me, and, as much as it pains me to admit it, those prats we visited yesterday. And you're still that person. You're still defending me, still fingering those books in the living room like they hold all the answers you've ever sought, still trusting Blaise even though you know he's hiding something because you know he adores you. _Adores_ you."

"He adores you too," Hermione said quietly and Draco laughed.

"Yes," he admitted, "he does. He's prone to adoration, our Blaise. And he's pretty fierce in defense of the people he loves; there's a reason you two get along so well. My point, bossy girl, is that you're still you and maybe you remember a lot more and maybe you just remember snippets like you have been but I'll be standing here, holding on to you, no matter what happens."

She sniffled a bit before she started to shiver. "I'm starting to get cold," she muttered and he hustled them out and tossed her one of the towels, something so absurdly large she was sure he must have picked it out. "You have a thing for excess," she muttered, thinking of the bed and the shower.

She stopped to look at him, lean and dripping, with blond hair still sticking to his face, shoved back when he'd pushed it away from his eyes, a scar on his torso that she reached out to trace with her fingers. "Thank you," she said.

"You don't need to lock yourself away," he said, grey eyes serious. "I'm happy to be cried on any time this gets too overwhelming."

"I'll be okay," she muttered and he grabbed her wrist and tugged her towards him, put his finger under her chin and made her look up at him.

"I know," he said. "I know you will. It's still fine to lean on me."

. . . . . . . . . .

Blaise was sorting through the morning mail when he looked up and grinned, a bit of relief laced through the expression. "The ring is ready," he said and Draco looked pleased.

"Good," he said, "you can go get it and get it back on her finger where it belongs."

"Fair maiden," Blaise called across the room, "can I interest you in a trip to the jeweler?"

"Do I have a choice?"

"Of course you do. You can agree now or you can be difficult and I'll nag until you give in."

"Tell me again why I'm marrying you," Hermione muttered.

Blaise laughed and loped over to her where she stood, as usual, at the bookcases. Wrapping his arms around her he bent his head down and ran his tongue up her neck until he tugged on her ear with his teeth. "I could show you?" he suggested and she snorted.

"Don't make it quite so easy for me to insult you," she said without looking up from her book and then squeaked as he picked her up and twirled her around.

"She's back," he smirked even as she yelped "Put me down."

. . . . . . . . . .

"Draco, what an unexpected pleasure," Narcissa held her hand out and he dutifully kissed it. "What brings you home?"

He smiled at his mother, a lifetime of training keeping him from muttering, "Not the urge to see you." Instead, he said, eyebrows raised, "Have I been neglecting you?"

"I would never accuse you of any such thing," she said, guiding him to a seat. "Still, a mother's desire to see her grown son is, alas, sadly destined to always outpace that man's available time to visit so I do make do with what few crumbs you throw me."

"No one would ever dare throw you crumbs," he smiled and waited until she settled herself before sinking to his own chair. "Brioche, maybe."

She dimpled at him. "What can I do for you, darling."

"I just want to poke around the library. I was unfortunate enough to visit Harry Potter yesterday and his house made me curious about dark magics."

Narcissa smiled at her son. "It's lovely to see you taking an interest," she said.

"In Harry Potter?" He made a face. Despite their mutual gratitude that the wretched boy had managed his life's work and killed the Dark Lord, one of the few things he and his mother agreed upon these days was their equally mutual disdain for the hero.

"No." Her expression mirrored his. "Merlin forbid; Blaise is one thing, tolerable, albeit barely. The half-blood Potter brat would be quite another. No, I mean an interest in dark magics of course, dear boy. You have a remarkable and distinguished family history in that area."

"Well, I do live to please you." He smiled at her even as he inwardly cringed at her ongoing acceptance of the dark arts. Some people, it appeared, never learned and if she thought he had any interest in burying his soul in that particular graveyard she was fooling herself. It pained him to think that Blaise might be right about his mother: dark arts and blood status. What was he going to do about her? He wished she wouldn't make it so obvious he was going to be forced to choose.

"You used to lie so well," that mother said now as she stood again. "You should work on that. Will you join me for tea after you're done combing through old books?"

"Of course."

I love you, Mother, he thought. As difficult and unpleasant as you have become in the wake of Father's imprisonment, I love you. Please don't be like this.

. . . . . . . .

The ring was beautiful and so much simpler than she'd feared given Draco's tendencies towards excess. Blaise leaned up against the counter, doing that feline thing where he seemed both unconcerned and boneless while being neither; he watched her face when the jeweler pulled the ring out and she saw the simple emerald, a silver band, a line of script on the inside. She turned it so she could read and then looked up at him.

"Runes?" she asked and he smiled.

"They did call you the brightest witch of our age. Good to see that wasn't for – " he broke off at the glare she was fixing on him.

"These are _archaic_ runes," she informed him and he grinned.

"I am aware of that, lion of mine." He plucked the ring from her hand and squinted at the inscription, turning the band back and forth until the jeweler brought out a small light so he could check the work more easily. "Nice," he finally said and the jeweler smiled tightly.

"We stand by all our work, Mr. Zabini," he said.

"And the spell work," he asked and the man nodded even as Hermione snatched the ring back from Blaise and stared at it.

"I don't sense anything," she said and Blaise gave her that smug grin again.

"I should hope not. What good are protective charms if every last witch who comes in contact with you can tell they're there?"

"We do careful, discrete and subtle work," the jeweler said, adjusting his loupe as he took the ring back from her and gave the engravings one final examination. "Though, if I may be so bold, this particular bit of work is something I'm especially proud of. Not many people can still enchant runic protection into metal. Stones, yes; paper, absolutely, but a ring? And a woman's ring at that where the work has to be so much more precise because the area to write on is smaller?" He handed the ring back to Blaise. "It was a pleasure to do."

"Upset?" Blaise was watching her and she saw the jeweler, his discretion on display, retreat to the back of his work area so his two customers could speak in at least the illusion of privacy.

"I…" She looked down at the ring in his hand and swallowed hard. "You've made this into something powerful, haven't you?"

"I have more charm work at home to put on it," Blaise said, speaking softly, "and I'd say I wouldn't if you didn't want me to but that would be a lie and, while there are a lot of things I don't tell you, I never _ever _lie to you. I plan to layer as much onto this as I can with every bit of knowledge I can dredge out of the two, fairly extensive, pureblood libraries I have ready access to and I'll do it even if I have to work that thing off your finger while you sleep. You're mine and it's my job to keep you safe and this is one way I plan to do it." He stopped she could see him preparing to argue with her and she tried to sort this out. She was fairly sure that being taken care of was something that didn't happen to her, that she…

"I know," he muttered, "that you think you are wholly able to protect yourself and, fuck, history certainly suggests that that's true but I have to do this or I'll feel – "

She cut him off by shoving herself into his embrace, wrapping her own arms around him and holding on. "You're absolutely wonderful," she said. "Deceptive and arrogant and absolutely, utterly wonderful."

"You're not mad?" He seemed somewhat surprised by that as he stood there, stiff under her assault.

"You crazy, wonderful man," she hugged him harder. "Let's go home so I can show you just how not mad being cared for makes me."

He stepped out of her embrace and looked at her. "I could do that," he said, "but first…" Hermione stepped back in shock as he knelt down. "Hermione, will you marry me? I know you said yes before but, given our current situation, I feel I should ask again. Will you let me…"

"Yes," she hissed, flushed and pleased and wondering if she could sink into the stone floor right here. "Now get up. We are in a store; we are in _public_. You're embarrassing me."

He got an evil glint in his eye at that and, before he could act on it, she added, "I can absolutely rescind my earlier suggestion if you do not _get up_."

Blaise pulled himself to his feet, flowing back upwards, and she glared at him though her grin that wouldn't quite fade no matter how stern she tried to look until he slid the ring onto her finger and kissed the back of her hand. Then she stopped, her heart caught up in her throat, and tried to swallow away the emotions that threatened to choke her. "Thank you," he murmured, "I wasn't sure…" and she put her hand on his cheek.

"Yours," she said, "Angelo."

She watched him close his eyes for a moment and, when he opened them she waited for the cocky remark but he just said, eyes bright and glinting in the light from the window, "Yours too, love."

. . . . . . . . .

Draco tossed the book at Blaise. "I've marked the relevant passage."

The other man opened the book and started to read, then looked up at Draco with a slowly growing fury.

"Exactly," said Draco. "It wasn't an accident."

. . . . . . . . . .

**A/N – Thank you to everyone who reads and reviews my little mystery. I do promise everything gets revealed in time, and not after any 200,000 words. I think this one will top out at only about 15 chapters. I'm finishing up work on Ch. 12 now and the outline suggests about 3 more will be needed to tie up all the loose ends.**


	10. Chapter 10

_Draco tossed the book at Blaise. "I've marked the relevant passage." _

_The other man opened the book and started to read, then looked up at Draco with a slowly growing fury. _

"_Exactly," said Draco. "It wasn't an accident."_

Hermione stretched her feet out and grinned at the fairly dotty blonde woman she'd been dropped off with, like a child at a minder's, while Blaise went off to meet with someone in private. He and Draco had been on edge all day and, since she suspected asking questions would only get her more clever evasions coupled with pleas for time, she'd been just as happy to leave them to themselves. Prats.

They were fools if they thought she'd just sit around forever while they dithered and asked her to be patient about their collusion to keep her in the dark but she thought she could sit around today here in the window of this sunny café, soaking in light and heat and feeling lazily contented.

This woman – Luna – didn't trigger a single memory but she certainly knew a great tea shop and they were both currently digging into their puddings with childlike abandon.

"So you don't remember _anything_?" the woman asked again, obviously fascinated by the whole memory loss problem.

"Bits and pieces come back," Hermione said with a shrug, "but they tend not to be connected to anything."

"That's kind of wonderful," Luna said, grinning at her. "It's like a perfect, fresh slate to start your life over. Can't remember where the cat food is? Well, what do you expect, I've lost my memory. Forgot it was my day to take out the trash? Oh well."

"Ron was a bit unpleasant about it," Hermione reached across the table to get the pot and refill her tea cup even as she was charmed by Luna's wholly unexpected perspective. "Yelled at Blaise and Draco and all."

Luna shrugged. "Not like you'd remember this but there was the screaming match to end all screaming matches when Ron found out you were going to marry both of them. Called it immoral and disgusting and all sorts of things. In public. You had a few things to say to him. As I recall 'judgmental troglodyte' was a phrase you repeated more than once. You drew a crowd." She scraped at the edge of her plate where a dab of pudding had gone astray. "He can be a bit cruel but he doesn't mean it. He's just impulsive and let's his emotions run away with him. I always thought your brief fling with him was why you fell into Blaise's arms."

"Really?" Hermione leaned forward, fascinated to get an outsider's impression of her history.

"Well," Luna licked her fork. "Blaise adores you, of course, but he's not the sort to ever let his emotions get the best of him. I think he could face torture with little more than a snide remark and a raised eyebrow. Seeing that one lose control must be something."

"What makes you think I've seen him lose control?"

"You're waiting for the marriage? Or is it that you just haven't since your accident?" Luna looked fascinated again and Hermione had to think for a moment to realize what she meant and then she flushed, the red creeping up her neck and over her cheeks.

"Umm. No," she muttered. "Or rather, yes. Or. We have, I mean."

"Well then," Luna said cheerfully and Hermione started to laugh, probably the first moment of real mirth she'd had since she woken up.

"He is… yeah," she said, still red. "Definitely something." She took a sip of her tea to try to hide the embarrassment that still painted her face.

"How about Draco," Luna asked and Hermione nearly spit that tea out.

"Also something," she said, gasping for air.

"I always wondered," Luna said, her voice filled with mischief but also with the promise of friendship. "He certainly looks like all kinds of buried smolders just waiting to burst into flame but we weren't close, really, so I could never ask."

"I think we're close now," Hermione said, "or we certainly will be. If you want. I get the impression I'm not good at people. I mean, 'troglodyte' is a bit harsh, especially towards a man I apparently had a thing with on top of being best friends and all."

"You aren't great with people," Luna agreed. "Not really. But then, neither am I. You're abrasive and bossy and I'm generally considered vague. Plus, of course, your very public unconventional relationship makes people uncomfortable."

"Why?" Hermione asked, genuinely curious what the other woman thought but also more than a little tired of the judgment she'd gotten from both her Healer and her old friends.

"Jealous, probably," Luna said with serene poise.

"Fools," Hermione muttered. "If you think one man is hard to manage, you should try two. And me with a head injury." Luna laughed and they sat, then, and regarded each other with a growing sense of kinship across the table.

"I don't suppose we're already close enough to share details?" Luna asked and Hermione, with a grin, waved over the waitress to get a refill on the tea.

"So," she said, and they spent the next hour, heads tipped together over the cooling tea, comparing the techniques of the three men in their lives. When Blaise arrived at the café, ready to pick up Hermione, frustration in both his posture and eyes, he was greeted by Luna's nearly demented giggling at the sight of him. That made him wonder, perhaps too late, if he would live to regret his idea to reintroduce the two of them. Still, close friends other than Potter and Weasley had to be a net gain. Right?

. . . . . . . . . .

"So," Draco said as they all sat on the patio in the back of their flat, "let's go back to the name discussion, shall we? Now that you've agreed to marry us again – "

"Technically," Hermione cut him off, "I've only agreed to marry Blaise again." At his stricken look she almost immediately relented and pointed out the obvious. "You haven't asked."

He crossed his arms and glowered at her in the candlelight and the sky slowly dimmed. "I most certainly did. It was romantic, too. Roses. Strolling minstrels. Even a unicorn."

"Liar," she said, and held her wine glass out to Blaise who filled in.

"Do you remember?" he smirked at her and when she shook her head he said, "Then there were definitely unicorns."

"Oh, are we up to plural unicorns now?" Hermione asked and Blaise bit back a laugh as he watched the pair of them spar. "Next thing I know you'll have added some kind of flying cupid to the entire event, complete with a miniature bow and arrow set."

"You _do_ remember!" Draco said and for a brief moment a look of absolute horror at the hideous, over-the-top possibilities of a Draco in full-on excess mode crossed her face until she saw the smirk he was trying to hide.

"You're just taking the piss," she muttered.

Blaise took pity on her. "Other than you were both naked at the time, as was I, it was a wholly conventional proposal. He got down on a knee and held out the ring and you looked at me and I nodded, and you squealed and then you said yes and then we started arguing about the names. An argument that continued for months and only stopped when you fell down the stairs."

"Names?" Hermione looked at him.

"You know, would you keep yours, hyphenate, take one of ours, what would we do. There are a lot of potential name combinations when you've got three people to deal with." Blaise took a sip from his own glass and grinned, waiting for the ongoing argument to continue. He'd long since decided he didn't care what the woman's name was as long as she was his; Draco, silly man, continued to hold on to a far more conservative view of the whole situation. Of course, Blaise's own mother changed her name every few years so he didn't have the same reverence for tradition that Draco couldn't quite shake off; Blaise hadn't even met his last few step-fathers before they'd died of old age, happy to the end. She was unique, his mother. Of course, unlike Draco's dreadful mother she also had no objection to his own romantic life. "Two men at once?" she'd mused when he'd told her about Hermione and Draco. "That's efficient of her; wish I'd thought of it."

"I don't see why anyone needs to change a name." Hermione interrupted his thoughts as she made a face. "So much work."

Draco slouched. "Here we go again."

"What?" She took a sip of her wine. "Why should we pick one name over another? That seems unfair. And hyphenating all three of them is just ridiculous."

"But I _want_ to give you my name," he muttered in frustration. "Any other woman would be salivating at the prospect but no, I have to fall for the one woman in all of wizarding Britain who isn't impressed by my lineage."

"Hermione Malfoy," she said the name slowly, letting it roll around on her tongue.

"It sounds good doesn't – " Draco's teasing drawl was cut short when Blaise was suddenly yelling out a spell and yanking Hermione towards him, his sharp jerk dragging her down to the ground and scraping her knees across the flagstone as a heavy figurine from the roof toppled down and shattered, its descent only slightly slowed by the frantically cast spell, crushing the chair she'd been sitting in and spraying all of them with broken bits of concrete.

"What the _fuck_?" Draco looked at the broken gargoyle and then up at Blaise who had the shaking woman in his arms and was breathing hard.

. . . . . . . . . .

"That hurts," Hermione complained as Blaise dabbed the potion on the scrapes on her knees.

"I promise you," Draco said, squatting next to Blaise and staring at the bloody marks, "that I will distract you from the pain later. Right now we need to talk."

"You plan to – ouch!" she yanked her leg away from Blaise and glared at him.

"Hold still," he muttered. "I'm cleaning out all the little bits and getting this properly treated. Do you _want _scars?"

She clenched her jaw and grabbed Draco's hand as Blaise continued working. Draco flinched when she squeezed after a particularly painful bit and then said, "I think you've been cursed."

"What?"

Draco exhaled and glanced at Blaise. "I don't think your fall was an accident, I don't think this _thing_ that just happened was an accident. I think you've been cursed."

Blaise was taping a large bandage to each knee as Draco continued. "It was the way Potter's house made you squirm. Out of nowhere you were more sensitive to dark magic residue and I thought that couldn't be good so I did some research."

"Where?" Hermione was ignoring Blaise now and was focused wholly on Draco.

"The Manor," he said, making a face. "I made nice to my mother for you and, frankly, I think I should get some kind of reward for that. Preferably something sexual that involves flexibility or maybe a blindfold and honey because visiting her is _not_ on my top-ten list of things to do."

"A blindfold, you say?" Blaise stood up and held his hand out to Hermione who took it and cringed a bit as she rose.

"Still hurts," she muttered.

"Pain potion probably not a good idea because of the head injury," Blaise said, frowning at her. "You may just have to deal with it."

"Who would be wearing this hypothetical blindfold," Hermione asked, leaning on Blaise as he walked her back to the bedroom.

"You," Draco drawled, outrageous leer firmly in place.

"Well," she said, bending one knee back and forth, "I guess as long as I don't have to be the flexible one we could talk about that."

"Before we start talking about any kind of delightful way to end what, frankly, has been a most unpleasant afternoon and evening," Blaise said, "would you get her the book you showed me."

Draco nodded and, pulling the book out of a drawer handed it over to Hermione as Blaise settled her back into their bed. She looked up at the man and he flipped the book to the marked page and she began to read. "This isn't exactly a diagnosis," she said after a bit and Draco nodded.

"But it's an explanation, and one we should get checked out."

"Dark curses can cause increased sensitivity to dark magical residue," she murmured, closing the book. "The horcrux was like that. Sort of."

Both men stopped and looked at her. "We took turns wearing it," she said, impatiently. "When we were in the woods. Ron, Harry and I. Before we figured out a way to destroy it. It made you… just awful. It brought out all the darkness inside you and magnified it."

"You remember?" Blaise said, very cautiously, and she opened her mouth, then closed it again.

"I do," she said. Then she shook her head. "I did. Not everything, damn it. It was _right there_. I didn't even have to struggle to reach for it. I just knew, like a normal person. Now… just...it's just flashes. Maybe that's all it was but I wasn't trying so hard so it didn't seem odd. Yes, I remember the locket. I remember fighting. I remember struggling to stay sane when that thing was around my neck. Ron was… it hit him really hard."

"Not surprised," Blaise muttered.

"So…" Draco said, "You agree the way you reacted to Potter's place…"

"It makes sense," she admitted. "Your idea makes sense. If I had some kind of lingering curse on me it might react to the things in his place, interact with them in some way that made my skin crawl."

"It shouldn't have been possible for someone to curse her, though," Blaise said. "Even before we had that inscription added, her ring was not exactly free of protective spells."

"But she took it off," Draco said. "She took it off so we could have the extra layers added."

"And she fell within days of that."

Both men looked at one another over her head and Hermione could feel the gathering wave of their plotting glide along, picking up energy and purpose. "We need a curse breaker." Draco said it. His tone was absolutely flat and unyielding. "I don't know who cursed her, with what, or how but something is _wrong_."

"It's your mother," Blaise said and Draco's face got tight.

"We get her cleaned up _first_ then we find the source. Unless you were trying to recommend my mother as a curse breaker, in which case I will have to remind you she has almost no practical skills other than entertaining and we can't get a dark curse off with a soiree or a fete or even a party for hundreds."

"'Unfortunate accident'" Blaise quoted. "Like a fall down the stairs, or being crushed by a toppled gargoyle? Too close to mommy's little snide remark for comfort, Draco."

"Curse breaker _first_," the man said again.

"Don't think I won't kill her."

"Do you want to reveal all your nasty little secrets right now?" Draco demanded. "Because if you don't then I suggest you shut up about your penchant for murder and stay focused on the task at hand: getting our fiancé uncursed before she's our unfortunately accidentally deceased fiancé."

There was a pause while both men glared at one another until Blaise said, backing down, "I happen to know a man in Italy who is very good."

"Excellent." Draco took the book out of Hermione's hands and put it down on the bedside table with not quite enough force to be considered 'slamming' but certainly more than was necessary. "Make the arrangements, will you?"

"I will," Blaise said.

"Do I get any input here?" Hermione asked and Blaise snorted.

"Is that a serious question?"

"No." Draco said. "You do not."

"I'm not sure I like your high-handed approach," Hermione muttered.

"Get used to it," Draco said. "Until you're pronounced curse-free you're going to see a lot of it."

"You don't get to just boss me…" Hermione trailed off her rather outraged protest when she saw the look in Draco's eyes. Implacable. Determined. And terrified. She looked over at Blaise who, even if his expression wavered a bit more, even if he seemed a bit more apologetic they were just taking over and making decisions and plans on her behalf, was clearly just as sure he'd end up getting his own way, was just as scared.

It really was the fear that did it. They were genuinely afraid.

"Well," she said. "I've always wanted to see Assisi."

"It's very nice," Blaise said, relaxing a bit. "The man I know is actually in Rome but after he's done with you we can head out and play tourist a bit."

Draco had turned and pulled something out of a drawer and tossed it to her. She put her hands up to shield her face and both men laughed. They laughed harder when she picked the scrap of fabric out of her lap and looked at Draco with an expression that couldn't quite decide if it were outrage or amusement.

"I _did_ tell you I'd distract you from the pain in your knees," Draco drawled, "and I _did_ mention a blindfold. If I'm going to be high-handed and bossy and have my wicked way with you, you might as well enjoy it."

"What about…" Hermione looked over at Blaise who cooed at her.

"I'll be right here, sweetheart."

"Oh," she said, swallowing hard as she looked from man to man. "Oh." She looked down at the blindfold in her hands and then up at them. "This is one of the benefits of dealing with both of you, isn't it?"

"Well," said Draco, taking the blindfold and gently fastening it into place. "Why don't you find out?"

. . . . . . . . . . .

_**A/N**__ – __**Thank you, everyone, for following along on this little fic. As shameful as it is to admit it, your reviews inspire me to actually write instead of just staring idly at Facebook. But, really, those baby sloths… they're so cute!**_


	11. Chapter 11

"_Oh," she said, swallowing hard as she looked from man to man. "Oh." She looked down at the blindfold in her hands and then up at them. "This is one of the benefits of dealing with both of you, isn't it?"_

"_Well," said Draco, taking the blindfold and gently fastening it into place. "Why don't you find out?"_

Hermione had to admit that the apartment in Rome was wonderful. Small, yes, but centrally located with big windows that let light pour in and starkly simple furnishings. There were, of course, bookshelves and the moment she saw them her fingers almost itched to see what Blaise had in what was clearly mostly his apartment. "Where's the granite?" she teased Draco as she looked around. "Where're the silk sofas and the important architectural doodads?"

"I had this place before I had Draco," Blaise said, settling down onto the simple, practical couch, "or you, for that matter, and the only changes I've made were to get a bigger bed. NOT as big as that behemoth in London but large enough we can all fit."

"That bed had to be specially made," Draco said, lolling against the wall. "And it wouldn't fit into the bedroom here anyway."

"And its size will be very handy if we ever plan on bringing an entire acrobatic troupe into bed with us," said Blaise with a snort. "However, I think this one here will suit just fine."

"When do we meet with your curse-breaking connection," Draco asked, moving on from their implied criticism of his taste with an annoyed look. He _liked_ their large bed. It was comfortable and Blaise tended to fling an arm out when he slept and there were really only so many times a man could get smacked in the face before he took steps to be able to sleep both _with_ his partner and _far enough away_ from his partner.

"_I_ meet," Blaise muttered about the curse breaker. "He's insisting I meet with him alone first. He's a paranoid loon, to be honest, but he's great at what he does."

"Then _go_," Draco said, his eyes on Hermione as she wandered the apartment, pulling books off shelves. She held one up to him. _The British Pure-Blood Directory_. Draco groaned. "Nice, Blaise," he muttered. "Any other light reading material around?"

She already had another one in her hand and Draco could see her working out the translation in her head. _Il Più Puro__dei Puri_. "I guess I'm not supposed to ask questions about your library?" she was asking and Blaise cringed.

"If you wouldn't mind," he said and then withered a little bit under her glare.

"'The Purest of the Pure'," she said, sliding the book back into place and pulling out another one. "'_Il Problema__Moderna Con__Fango__Sanguigno'_. Really, Blaise?"

"I love you," he said, his voice low. "Everything I do with that filth is done for you, to protect you."

"Why can't you just be a really secretive accountant or something," she said, shoving 'The Problem with the Modern Mud Blood' back onto the shelf.

"That would be boring?" he asked, smiling somewhat tentatively at her as she sat next to him. She gave him a mock quelling glare before leaning against him and taking his hand in hers, twining her fingers through his.

"I must trust you one hell of a lot," she murmured and he turned his head to kiss her hair.

"I'm glad," he said. "Because I'd walk through hell for you. Or, as is more often the case, endure hellish social gatherings."

"With pure blood elitists?" she asked.

"That," Blaise said, "would be telling. Which, as I think I've mentioned, I am not allowed to do. Try to contain your curiosity for a bit longer; I've put in a formal request for security clearance but these things take time."

"Accounting is a very nice career," she muttered and he laughed.

"If I ever need to actually earn a living I'll consider it," he said before rising and preparing to leave. "I'm off to meet with my paranoid friend. I'll be back after lunch and, if all goes well, we'll take you right back to his place, get you de-cursed, then go out for dinner. In the meanwhile, don't take your ring off, okay love?"

"Why would I?"

"Just…don't."

"I'll keep an eye on her," Draco said, still leaning against the wall. "Don't worry. How much trouble can she get into over lunch?"

"Well, we don't have any information about what this curse is or what it does. She could be randomly struck by lightning for all we know. Just… keep the ring on because at least the protective spells should do _some_ good." Blaise stopped to kiss Draco before leaving, a kiss meant to be quick that ended up with both of them leaning against the wall, Blaise's hands holding the other man to him. "I'm trusting her with you," he murmured against Draco's mouth. "Try not to screw it up."

Draco snorted and shoved Blaise towards the door. "Sometimes I think you've got this mistaken idea you're the only bad boy in this little relationship of ours."

After Blaise set out to meet with his curse-breaker friend Draco sighed and looked at Hermione. "Please tell me you, at least, don't think I'm some kind of helpless nitwit who'd just be lost without his highness' leadership."

Hermione huffed out a laugh. "Hardly."

Draco peeled himself off the wall with a bit of a scowl still on his face. "I'm starved, and Blaise never keeps any food in this place. Claims it would go bad between visits."

"He could try using magic?" Hermione asked, with a roll of her eyes and Draco snorted.

"You try telling him that. He claims he can tell the difference between fresh food and magically preserved food."

"That's ridiculous," she said getting up.

"I agree, and yet here we are in an apartment without so much as a box of crackers. Can I interest you in lunch? Something at a nice outdoor café, maybe? I realize you might be struck by lightning but it's a risk I'm prepared to take on this sunny day in order to get food."

"Sounds absolutely lovely." Hermione tucked her arm into Draco's only to have him pull her into a tight embrace. He didn't say anything, just held her for a long moment before releasing her and, his arm hooked into hers, he lead her down the stairs and out into the street. The nearest café was bustling but the hostess took one look at Draco and they were led to a table right at the edge of the seating with a lovely view of the small square. "This is perfection," Hermione said, dropping her bag and settling down into the chair Draco held for her. "Why have you never brought me here before?"

"Are you so sure I haven't," Draco grinned cheekily at her as he sat down in his own chair and waved the waitress over. A quick order – in Italian, she noted with some annoyance. Who knew he could speak Italian? – and then he leaned back and smirked at her. "Maybe, bella donna, we've been here dozens of times."

"Not fair," she said and the look of bitter frustration in her eyes wiped the smile from his.

"I'm sorry," he reached over and took her hand. "We haven't. This is Blaise's little retreat, near one of his mother's more permanent residences, and I've been here with him a few times but you haven't."

"The traveling thing," she said, eyeing him. "The books."

"He comes to meet with people and you've always shrugged and said joining him on business travel didn't sound fun, especially since you didn't speak the language you couldn't just wander about and explore comfortably." Draco paused. "Not that he'd let you do that, of course. Not here."

"Let?" She looked at him.

"Italy isn't always the safest place for unescorted Muggle-born witches," Draco said quietly. "For most people, of course, it's not a big deal. It's not like you can tell whether a woman has magical parents just by looking at her. But you, well, everyone knows who you are. Fame puts you at risk so, no, neither of us will be 'letting' you walk about alone."

The waitress bustled up, interrupting their awkward silence with a bottle of wine and a long diatribe in Italian that seemed, as far as Hermione could tell, to be scolding Draco for something. He declined to translate after the woman left, just rolled his eyes and muttered something about how you eat at one restaurant a few times and they think they own you. Then he raised his glass to toast Hermione. She lifted hers as well and at the little clink he said, "To getting you un-cursed."

"Indeed," she said. "Do you think when the curse is gone my memory will come back?" It was an idea she'd had as soon as she'd realized Draco wasn't kidding about the curse, maybe it wasn't a head injury that had stripped away everything she knew. Maybe it was magic.

"I don't know," he sighed. "Maybe?"

Lunch was lovely, simple salads that Draco ordered, showing off his Italian again, and they ate in companionable, hungry silence until Draco, draining the last of his wine, pushed back his chair and said, "I need to go to the loo. Try not to be smashed by falling debris or struck by lightning or anything while I'm gone, okay?" Draco stood and dropped a kiss on the top of her head.

She laughed and said, "I'm pretty sure I'll be safe for a few minutes in an open air café."

"Yeah, well, dark curse and all. Just… be careful." He frowned at her but she rolled her eyes and waved a hand at him and he headed off, picking his way between the closely placed tables towards the interior of the café.

She had a forkful of salad halfway to her mouth when the two men sat down at her table. One was big, really big, the kind of man who took up the space of two people without even trying and who you expected to hear complain how unfair it was that people were intimidated by his size because he was really such a nice guy, just a harmless teddy bear.

Hermione didn't think this man was a nice guy.

The other was wholly forgettable looking. Neither attractive nor plain, with no distinguishing marks, he was dressed in clothes fashionable enough to draw no attention in Rome and unremarkable enough no one would ever quite be able to describe them.

"Look," the larger man said, "it's Malfoy's mudblood."

"I thought she was Zabini's mudblood," the other man objected.

"I do believe she's both of theirs," the larger man said, as if he were conceding a point. "The little lady does seem to have a bit of a kink, doesn't she?"

Hermione slowly set her fork down and reached for her wand, only to find her pocket empty.

"Sorry about that," the large man said. "My friend here has a bit of a problem taking other people's things. He's like a magpie, he is."

"Give it back," Hermione said, her voice low.

"I don't think so." The large man regarded her with patient amusement. "I have a feeling you'd be less interested in leaving with us if you had your wand to hand."

"I'm not going anywhere with you."

"I'm afraid you are," the man said and she gasped as she felt the point of a knife pushed against her side. "I'd rather not have to really hurt you – healing you up afterwards would be a nuisance – but it struck me that you might have a knack for wandless magic and we'd be better off keeping you distracted and pain's pretty good for that. We'll just gag you once we get you back to our place, don't worry."

"They'll kill you," Hermione said, her voice low and calm even as she wondered where the hell Draco was, even as the feel of the knife against her skin made her panic. He wasn't even hurting her, not really, just threatening her, so why did even the touch of a blade push her to borderline hysterics?

"The Malfoy boy?" The larger man snorted. "That one couldn't even kill a man when that Voldemort chap was threatening his family. He's certainly not going to kill in cold blood now, not for you. Don't flatter yourself. And the other one? Zabini? He may be a dab hand with the ladies but he's – " the man broke off as if searching for the right word, a word his partner was happy to supply.

"A pussy?"

"Yes, that fits. In so many ways," the man smiled at her, a toothy smile. "I'm sure he'll be distraught to lose you and your obviously accommodating ways, at least for a bit, as will the Malfoy boy. They'll be so sad, really, but they'll let you go once they understand the alternative. I'm sure they'll be happy to comfort each other, fall into each other's arms and arses."

"Who would have thought the Malfoy bitch would have been so accepting that her son was a poofter," the forgettable man said, the knife he had pressed into her side never wavering.

"Well," the larger man said with a shrug, "Zabini's blood is awfully pure, pure enough to make up for the fact he's got a cock, and he's got all those pure-blooded friends and associates that he's always meeting with. I'm sure they'll be happier to bring him even deeper into the fold with this one out of the way and she'd probably like that."

"Still," other man pressed and the larger man nodded.

"I admit it surprised me too, but maybe she's working in stages. It isn't really our responsibility to pass judgment on our employer's plan, though, merely to carry out our contractual obligations."

"A point," the forgettable man said.

"A most salient point."

"Indeed."

"Also," the larger man said, reaching out to take a fork and helping himself to some of Hermione's salad, "I don't feel you should refer to the woman who pays us as a 'bitch'. It seems uncouth."

"Another point."

Hermione listened to their back and forth and began to really worry; Draco should have been back by now. She used her foot to slowly nudge her bag under the table, out of obvious sight, and began to think as clearly as she could with a knife not quite slicing into her. Blaise would come back. If she and Draco were both missing he'd realize they'd gone to lunch and, if they never made it back, would search every café to find them. This one was the closest to the apartment and, given the way the waitress had scolded Draco, it was clear they ate here often so he'd probably even start here. Her abandoned bag would be a sign he'd never miss. He'd find her; all she had to do was stay alive and in one piece until he did. She calmed her breathing and stared at the man shoving a knife into her side. He looked back, his bland countenance unmoved by her glare.

"I like points." The large man took another bite. "This is an excellent salad." He took some money from his pocket and tossed it on the table. "Mustn't leave the bill unpaid," he said as a way of explanation as he rose. "Shall we bring the lady to her new accommodations?"

The other man didn't say anything but stood, pulling Hermione to her feet with his knife still pressed into her side.

"We're going to go for a little walk, then we're going to side-along apparate you. Try not to fuss; I'd hate to splinch you."

The three of them took off down the street, Hermione's bag forgotten under the café table.

. . . . . . . . .

_**A/N - Ooops. Cliffhanger. **_

_**Also, it's fourteen below zero out. That's -26 for people with sensible temperature scales.**_

_**Thank you all for your lovely, warm words. Between your love and the heater I might make it through. Also, I'm roasting a duck. Duck soup with beet greens and biscuits. **_

_For all you lovely people who review without logging in, some quick responses: Guest (Thank you! Triads seems to be a love/hate thing and I'm glad you're a lover.) Lauren (The details of the curse get cleared up in a few chapters.) Lucy (Thank you!)_


	12. Chapter 12

_The other man didn't say anything but stood, pulling Hermione to her feet with his knife still pressed into her side. _

"_We're going to go for a little walk, then we're going to side-along apparate you. Try not to fuss; I'd hate to splinch you."_

_The three of them took off down the street, Hermione's bag forgotten under the café table._

Draco came to in the toilet and sat up slowly, holding his head. Whoever had knocked him out hadn't meant to hurt him, just incapacitate him for a bit, and he wanted to kick himself for falling prey to such a simple curse. He felt for his wallet and, when he found it was still there, wasted a minute wondering why his assailant hadn't robbed him once he was passed out before one thought began to scream in his brain.

Hermione.

He'd left her alone. He'd left her _alone_ even though they were in Italy, even though he knew someone had cursed her, and now someone had attacked him, gotten him out of the way.

He scrambled to his feet and raced, stumbling over chairs and past swearing restaurant patrons to their table. Money sat next to his still uncleared plate and for a brief, painful moment he hoped she'd just paid the bill and gone back to the flat to find Blaise.

Then he saw her bag.

He darted out into the square and looked every way, begging the fates to let him see her, let him see whoever had hauled her away but no familiar, beloved bushy head was in sight.

He slowly returned to the table, mouth set into a grim line. He'd told one person they were coming to Rome; he was fairly sure Blaise had told none. Habits of trust die hard but now they were dead. She was dead to him; she'd be dead to everyone soon enough.

First, though, he and Blaise needed to get their witch back.

. . . . . . . . . .

The note was attached to the door of the flat when he got back, nearly running up all the steps.

_Agree to put her out of your life and we'll obliviate you both from her memory and release her otherwise unharmed. Refuse and she dies. You have 24-hours to respond._

. . . . . . . . . .

"She's gone," Draco said as soon as Blaise walked in. "Gone and you can lecture me _later_ after we fetch her back." He tossed her bag at the other man who caught it.

"Wand missing?" he asked and when Draco nodded he dropped the bag to the floor without a second look. Blaise was nothing if not efficient when he was working. "Any idea whether it was a random snatch and grab or something more targeted?"

"The note suggests targeted," Draco said, handing it over. Blaise skimmed it and rolled his eyes.

"Blah blah blah or we kill her."

"Pretty much."

"One thing," Blaise said, walking slowly over towards his best friend, romantic partner and occasional co-worker. "How did your loving mother know we were here? Because this is _clearly_ mommy's handiwork."

"Could be your friends'," Draco objected, narrowing his eyes.

Blaise snorted. "My 'friends' may think I have an unpleasant habit, they may think she's filth, but they don't care who a man fucks, not really, not as long as I don't expect them to receive her at their horrid parties, and the ones who might dabble in kidnapping damn well know I'd kill anyone who touched her so they certainly wouldn't be so stupid as to leave a bloody note behind letting me know I have 24-hours to find them. No, this reeks of your mother: amoral and sloppy at the same time.

"So I'll ask you one more time, Draco. Did you tell your mother we were coming to Italy?"

Draco had barely spit out, "Yes" before Blaise's fist connected with his nose.

"You fucking arsehole," Blaise said. Draco put his hand up to his face, took it away and then, looking at the blood, glared at his partner.

"Oh, I'm the arsehole, am I," he said. "How about you? Go ahead and justify how your little games are for the greater good all you want, go ahead and tell yourself your work makes our world safer for her in the long run but on a day-to-day basis it paints a target on her and you know it."

"Fuck you," Blaise said, breathing hard. "That's a load of shite. What I do, the risks I bloody well take, are to make her _safer_."

"Bullshite," Draco said. "You just like the fucking romance and danger. We didn't load that ring up with protective charms to keep her out of my mother's clutches but out of the hands of the people _you_ cultivate. If you were, what did she suggest, just a really secretive accountant, she wouldn't need thousands of galleons worth of bloody spells!"

"Try to remember that I am under-fucking-cover with those arseholes, Draco. They think I'm _on their side_. Sure, I may have a dirty fiancé but half of them envy me that. They think between the both of you I've found a way to have my proverbial cake and eat it too. Their speculations about what she's like in bed are vile and crude but they have no reason to kill her, no _interest_ in killing her. If someone found out I've been selling them out? Yes, then she'd be in danger, we all would. But they wouldn't fucking suggest I 'give her up'; they'd just kill her and dump her body on our doorstep."

"Is that supposed to make me feel better? Make me think your bullshite work _doesn't_ put her in danger?"

"And yet," Blaise's tone had shifted from anger to a quiet drawl, "despite my 'bullshite work' as you call it, the person who orchestrated her kidnapping, who is threatening to kill her, isn't some blood purist who who's decided to relieve me of my little mudblood problem or send me some kind of message but your mother. Your _loving_ mother."

"We don't know that," Draco said, but the look on his face belied his words.

"I'm going to kill her," Blaise said, very quietly. "Just as soon as we fetch our witch, get her de-cursed and go back to London."

Draco rubbed his hands over his forehead, avoiding his nose, and sighed. "Just… nothing brutal. The war – "

"For you," Blaise agreed, voice cold, "I'll end your broken, prejudiced mother quickly. In her sleep, even."

"Thank you."

They stood and stared at one another, Draco still wiping the blood from his face and Blaise breathing hard. Finally, Blaise muttered, "I'm sorry."

"You should be. Arsehole."

"Bastard."

Draco snorted at that. "I should be so lucky but, as you may have noticed, I'm almost an exact physical copy of my wonderful tosser of a father."

"I love you," Blaise said, stepping forward to dab at some of the blood.

"Abusive cretin," Draco said and Blaise sighed.

"I said I was sorry."

"You owe me," Draco muttered.

"Blow jobs every night for a month?"

Draco looked at Blaise and snorted. "You think you can buy your way out of nearly breaking my nose with offers of sex?"

"Can't I?"

"Probably," Draco admitted. "As long as you offer up enough of it. But let's go rescue the witch first."

"Did she still have the ring on?"

"She did when I left and it wasn't on the table when I got back," Draco said. "Why?"

"Location beacon on it, of course." Blaise said pulling out his wand and heading for the door, "Shall we go wreak a little mayhem on whoever thought to take our witch?"

. . . . . . . . . .

Hermione sat with her hands tied behind her in a chair, gag in her mouth, and worked on seeing whether she could manage wandless, voiceless magic and undo the knots restraining her. She was feigning a dispirited slump and had let any obvious fight leak out of her once the smaller man had slapped her across the face.

She recalled the articles she'd read about the torture Draco's aunt had put her through and wondered how these men were stupid enough to believe anyone could survive that and be broken by a bloody lip.

Blaise was going to be really angry about that lip though. And Draco – she had a feeling he'd be unamused as well.

"How does the man explain her, anyway?" the smaller man was asking as she tried to focus her will on the knots. "Kind of hard to work your way into the circles he's accepted in with some mudblood whore warming your bed, wearing your ring."

"He's also got an actual Death Eater in that bed," the larger man scoffed. "Maybe not the bravest of the bunch but he's got that Voldy fellow's little tattoo and everything. That'll give a man a little credibility with the blood purist snots. And the large monetary donations don't hurt." He looked up at Hermione. "Did you know lover boy makes regular and generous contributions to groups who, whatever pretty verbiage they put on their fliers, really just want to wipe people like you out?"

"Or enslave them."

"An excellent point."

So. That's what Blaise did. Hermione had to fight back a smile. No wonder he didn't want her to start asking questions; it was surely already tricky to maintain the illusion he was a dandy who liked to go to pureblood parties when he was away from her, that he was sympathetic to the cause. She wondered how much the pureblood elitists trusted Blaise, trusted Draco. Such perfect little pureblood boys, marked by Voldemort. There only flaw, really, the 'mudblood whore'. She'd be willing to bet vile men sat around and planned their vile plots while speculating on the things you could do with a mudblood you'd never ask a well-raised pureblood girl to do. She could almost hear them in her head. "And you wouldn't even have to pay her." "It would be like having a trained animal always to hand."

Fools.

She knew almost _nothing,_ remembered almost _nothing, _ but she knew both Draco and Blaise loved her. Anyone stupid enough to think otherwise, to think she was some toy in their hands, deserved everything he got. Or she got.

Of course, even Ron, who was apparently her best friend from childhood, thought that. She supposed she shouldn't be surprised prejudiced strangers assumed the same.

She wondered what Blaise did once he had the trust of pureblood elitist fools. She suspected it was morally rather grey.

These particular fools in front of her had just kidnapped the wrong woman.

And they'd bloodied her lip. If she could just get these knots undone, of course, she could free her hands, untie her gag, accio her wand and save the boys some trouble.

She returned her attention to focusing on the always tricky combination of wandless, silent casting.

. . . . . . . . . .

Blaise and Draco tracked the ring to a rather unprepossessing apartment building and glanced at one another before starting climbing the stairs. The pull of the spell on her ring led them to the fourth floor where they heard her voice raised in obvious anger.

"Take my wand, will you, you bastards?" they heard her nearly scream. "Poke me with a _knife_?" There was a loud crash followed by swearing in Italian. "Oh, don't even try; you are not going _anywhere_."

"I think whoever did this might have pissed her off," Draco said. "That was a mistake."

"Do you remember the time she left you stuck to the bed for three hours?"

"I had my wand _in my hand_ and still couldn't get the incantation to release," Draco reminisced as another loud crash came from inside the room.

"_Che befana! Che cazzo hai che non va_?"

"I don't believe we've been formally introduced," Hermione was saying, venom in her tone, as they opened the door and watched their witch standing over two men, both of whom appeared to be stuck to the floor. "My name is Hermione Granger and I helped bring down Lord-fucking-Voldemort and, if that weren't enough, if I weren't perfectly capable of defending myself against worthless trash like you, I'm engaged to two men who'd kill you as soon as look at you. If you think you get to fucking _kidnap me_ and escape unscathed you have a few things to learn." She huffed and then turned to the door and brushed her hair out of her eyes with an impatient swipe.

"Hi." Draco grinned at her, a cocky grin that hid his relief she was spitting mad rather than hurt. "Have you been good at your playdate?"

"I'm afraid I might have been a little rough with them but, in my defense, they deserved it; they hit me first." She shoved her wand back into her pocket and flung herself into his arms and let him reassure himself that she was okay before turning to include Blaise in the embrace.

Blaise had his eyes narrowed and was studying her swollen lip. Without speaking he squeezed her and then crossed the room and kicked the first man he came to in the mouth. Draco smiled at the sound of teeth breaking.

"Wrong one," Hermione offered, still wrapped in Draco's arms, and Blaise nodded at her and then kicked the other man first once, then again.

"Before they drown in their own blood," Draco said, "is there anything you want to ask them."

"Who hired you?" Blaise asked. One of the men spit blood and a broken tooth at him, muttering "_Amante di sanguemarcio_," and Hermione sighed.

"I'm sorry, Draco," she said and he shuddered and held her tighter.

"My fucking mother," he said. "I'm so sorry."

"Do you two want to leave me to clean this up?" Blaise asked and Draco nodded and jerked his head towards the door.

"They talked a bit. No sense of discretion, these two." Hermione said, looking very seriously at Blaise. "You don't have to protect me."

"I understand," he said, meeting her gaze. "Habits die hard." They looked at one another for a few moments and then the man grinned. "Maybe you can tend to Draco's nose while I take care of this unpleasant chore?"

"His nose?" She looked at Draco and began to follow him out of the room. "Why would his nose need tending? Draco? What happened to your nose?"

As they began to go down the stairs Blaise could hear her screech, "He did _what?_" and he had a feeling he'd be making amends for his punch to not one but both of his partners.

There were worse fates.

Like the one he meted out to the two men Hermione had left stuck to the floor.

. . . . . . . . .

_**A/N – This story is actually done. It worked out to two more chapters. I'll post every day or every other day until they're both up.**_

_**Thank you all for your thoughts and feedback and encouragement as I wrote this one. Fun to write a reasonably fluffy mystery instead of a plot-heavy dystopia where you can't trust anyone. I hope both the Blaise/Draco confrontation and the way the resuce wasn't actually necessary suited :)**_

_If I mangled the Italian, please let me know and I'll fix it. The intent was: "'Si cagna pazzo! (changed on reader suggestion) Che cazzo hai che non va?' – You crazy bitch! What the fuck is wrong with you? and 'Amante di sangue fangoso' – mudblood lover" (also edited thanks to a reader far more proficient in Italian than I am.)  
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_Many thanks to BipolarDragon and ga-4-ever for the Italian corrections!_


	13. Chapter 13

"_His nose?" She looked at Draco and began to follow him out of the room. "What happened to your nose?"_

_As they began to go down the stairs Blaise could hear her screech, "He did what?" and he had a feeling he'd be making amends for his punch to not one but both of his partners. _

_There were worse fates._

_Like the one he meted out to the two men Hermione had left stuck to the floor. _

"So," Blaise brushed some dust off his sleeves as he met up with Draco and Hermione in the street. "Shall we go and handle that de-cursing and then have dinner?"

Draco began to laugh at Blaise's matter-of-fact tone as he leaned against the wall. Hermione rolled her eyes and said, "Do you think you can contain yourself? I realize this whole 'kidnapping' thing put a bit of a snag in our plans but I'd still like to get this done as quickly as possible."

"Of course, my practical love." Draco took her hand. "Any evidence clean up required," he asked Blaise who shook his head.

"The place was already dusty. Now it's just a little more in need of a good cleaning."

"Like Harry's place?" Hermione asked and Blaise gave an exaggerated shudder.

"Not nearly _that_ bad. They hadn't been there long enough to accumulate all the crusted plates of half-finished take away."

"I'm hungry. One of them ate my salad," Hermione complained as they started walking and Draco snorted. "Of course," she added, "on the other hand he also paid for lunch."

"Well," Blaise said, "it's so uncouth to kidnap a woman _and _make her pick up the check. I'm glad to discover they were merely kidnappers with a death wish and not also rude. There are limits, after all."

"Do we have to walk the whole way," Hermione asked and Blaise sighed.

"I don't think I want to side-along you both, especially since I'm a little drained after… what I did."

"Do I want to ask?" Hermione slipped her free hand into his.

"We come from ashes and dust and to dust and ashes we all return." He pulled her hand up to his lips. "Some of us more rapidly than others."

. . . . . . . . . .

Blaise had warned them both that curse breaker was a peculiar man and he hadn't been exaggerating. When they climbed up the stairs to his apartment and rapped on his door they had to use a pattern that Blaise explained, with a roll of his eyes, was the way for the man to know that they were not, in fact, raving lunatics. When he opened the door a crack he peered out, squinted at Blaise, and then closed the door and removed the chain. After he hustled them through and into his apartment he looked down the hallway with a worried frown before shutting the door after them.

The apartment was dreary and dark filled with odd bits of furniture, all covered with piles of newspapers bound with string. The only clear surface was a round, scarred table that was bare save for an ornate box at its center. Hermione looked at the box and cringed. The man observed her reaction and said, "How does the box make you feel?"

Hermione looked at him and said, teeth gritted, "Like you set a bowl of vomit out on your table as a decoration and asked me what I thought of it."

"Excellent," the man said.

"What the fuck is in the box?" Draco asked. He had already had a difficult day, his nose still hurt, and dealing with one of Blaise's stranger work connections was something he didn't really have any patience for.

"It's a box of cursed jewelry," the man said. "Of course."

Draco had his fists in the man's shirt and had him slammed up against the wall almost immediately. "Are you trying to tell me that you have put a box of cursed jewelry out in front of my fiancé?" he demanded. "My already cursed fiancé?"

"Let me go," the man demanded and when Blaise cleared his throat and muttered, "Draco," in a warning tone the blond released the curse-breaker with a sharp jerk of his hands.

"It's the best way to test the curse removal," the man said with some irritation. "The box bothers her. Does it bother you?"

Draco shook his head.

"Well, of course it doesn't. You haven't been cursed. She has. If it doesn't bother her any longer after I'm done with my work then you'll know that the curse is gone."

"There has to be a better way to test the efficacy of curse removal," Draco muttered.

"There are others," the curse breaker said. "But I happen to like this one. And if you want to work with me you'll just deal with it."

"Can we get on with it?" Blaise demanded. "We have dinner reservations."

"One little warning about the cursed jewelry," the curse breaker said, and he sounded amused. Draco groaned.

"What?" He demanded.

"When I open the box to have her look through the jewelry to check whether or not she has even the slightest twinge of a reaction," the man explained, "she might feel compelled to put some of it on."

Draco looked at Blaise who shrugged.

"Just don't let her and everything will be fine," the curse breaker said, smiling a toothy smile. "If she gets away from you and puts it on you may be needing to hire me twice." He paused. "Or hire a Healer. Some of those things are really quite nasty."

There really has to be a better way to do the testing," Draco muttered but Blaise hissed, "This guy is the best, Draco. Would you please be quiet?"

The curse breaker walked around Hermione and studied her and finally announced, "Well, that was well done."

"What?" Draco demanded.

The man held up his hand and cast a few charms that sputtered and glowed and coughed smoke and nodded to himself. "Well done, indeed. Have a seat, my dear."

Hermione cast a quick look at Blaise, who shrugged but who was holding his wand with deceptive looseness. She pulled out a heavy chair and sat at the large table.

"Tell me your name," the man said.

"Hermione Granger," she said, eyebrows raised.

"Now say it again with each of their last names rather than your own."

"Hermione Zabini," she said, a question in her voice, then "Hermione Malfoy." She barely got the word 'Malfoy' out of her mouth before the chair collapsed and she crashed to the floor.

"What the – " Draco darted forward and scooped her up. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," she said, watching the curse breaker. "What do you mean it was 'well done'?"

"The trigger is obviously using his name," the man said, smiling at her, looking pleased with himself. "But what makes it clever is the randomization. Something bad will happen to you every time you refer to yourself as Hermione Malfoy but you might get struck by lightning, you might stub your toe. It helps disguise the curse; if you fell down the stairs every time you said it, well it would be obvious what the problem was, and probably who the culprit was; easier to circumvent an obvious curse. This way, well, you've probably said the name dozens of times and not had anything especially bad happen but sooner or later – bam. You're dead."

"Your fucking mother," Blaise muttered and Draco began to swear. "She even noticed the ring was gone; she bloody well _commented_ on it."

"Mmm. A well placed curse would have hung around and waited for an opening; she could have cast it –

"Had it cast," Draco muttered. "She hardly has the skill herself to do it."

" – and it would have basically hovered around you until you took the ring off and then latched onto you." He looked up at Blaise. "Nice work on that ring, by the way. Your time with David was obviously well spent."

"David?" Hermione asked.

"A charm worker I spent some time learning from," Blaise said. "Good man. Dead now."

"Is he?" The curse breaker sounded interested.

"Crossed the wrong person, not me."

"Ah." And his interest was gone. "Now, Miss Granger, I'm going to draw a circle of salt, candles at the corners, all sorts of boringly traditional things. Please stand here – ," and he indicated a worn spot on the floor, " - and don't disturb me. Gentlemen, I'll need you to stand back against the wall out of the way."

Draco glowered but allowed himself to be pulled back and stood with his back pressed up against the dingy and torn wallpaper, his arms crossed in front of him. "How," he hissed to Blaise, "did you even _find_ this man? Circles of salt? Has anyone done that in the last hundred years? Candles? Is he going to bloody well call the corners like some hedge witch too?"

Blaise shrugged and watched the man scurry about, pouring salt and what looked to be some kind of powder in a circle, setting out candles, muttering to himself as he worked. "He's the best, Draco. I realize he's… quirky - "

"That's one word for it," Draco muttered.

" – but he really is very good at what he does. Do you think you could stop questioning me, and this, long enough to get it over with?"

"I don't like this," Draco said under his breath but, after that last parlay, he shut his mouth into a tight line and waited.

After all the preparation the actual curse breaking was almost anti-climactic. The man made one final check of the perimeter of the circle he'd drawn on the floor, lit the candles he'd placed with a quick incantation and then stared at Hermione, almost unblinking. Finally he murmured something and flicked his wand and the candles flared briefly before going out. There was a bit of a dreadful sound, somewhere between the gurgle of a drowning man as he slipped under the water the last time and the cry of a colicky baby on his seventh hour of unending wails. After that there was silence until the man said, "Well, do you want it?"

"Want what?" Draco demanded.

"The curse," the man said, his tone making it very clear he thought Draco was a bit slow.

"What's it in?" Blaise asked, peeling himself off the wall.

The man held up a rather fussy necklace, garishly festooned with emerald leaves. "It'll cost extra if you want it," he said.

Blaise smiled, a rather cold and unpleasant smile, and asked, "Can you put it in a box? I'd rather not carry that thing."

"Done," the man said and he and Blaise made quick work of exchanging a rather heavy bag and the little box in which the curse-breaker had tucked the cursed necklace. "One thing," he said as Blaise tucked the box into an inside pocket of his jacket. "Once someone puts that on they'll not be able to take it off."

"Good to know," Blaise said. "How complicated would it be for someone wearing this necklace to get the curse removed?"

"Not complicated at all if she were to come see me," the man said with a sniff. "For anyone else?" He shrugged. "The necklace would probably strangle whoever had it on before the curse was properly negated. Like I said, that curse was good work. Impressive."

"Can we check to see if the fancy light flaring spell worked," Draco drawled from where he still leaned near the door. "Because, while I'm as impressed as the next man by magically lighting candles and then making them go out I'd like a teensy, tinesy test of the curse-removal before we leave."

The curse breaker shrugged and said, "Miss Granger, how does that box on the table make you feel?"

She studied and said, with delight. "Nothing. I'm feeling nothing."

He opened the box and held it towards her and she shrugged. "Why must witches have such terrible taste in jewelry? Is understated that hard to appreciate?"

Blaise snickered, and eyed Draco who rather pointedly ignored his partner.

"Would you be so kind as to say 'Hermione Malfoy' multiple times?" the curse break asked, closing up his box of cursed jewelry and setting on a shelf towards the back of the room.

"Hermione Malfoy. Hermione Malfoy. Hermione Malfoy. Hermione Malfoy." She began to repeat the name in a kind of singsong and Draco went from tensing at each repetition to smiling to finally smirking broadly.

"Do you remember anything," he asked and then her smile faltered and, as he realized she didn't, so did his.

"No," she whispered. "It's still all gone."

"Well, of course she doesn't," the man had taken out a broom and was sweeping up the salt. He sounded impatient with their naiveté. "From what Zabini here told me, the curse made her fall down the stairs; the head injury is what caused the memory loss. Getting rid of the curse didn't get rid of the bruise on her arse from when the chair collapsed earlier either."

"I'm so sorry," Draco said as she stepped over the edge of the circle and, once clear, flung herself across the room and into his arms.

"I know it was stupid," she whispered, "but I still hoped."

"I know, love," he said into her hair and he held her. "I know. But it doesn't matter. I'll still be here, we'll both still be here. And now you can even take my name."

She pulled back and looked at him with disbelief. "After all of this, you're reaction is – "

He started to laugh and she narrowed her eyes and glared at him.

"Dinner?" Blaise asked, opening the door and waving them both into the hallway. As they moved away down the hall Hermione muttered, "I am not changing my name."

"But it sounds so nice," Draco wheedled.

"No."

. . . . . . . . . .

_**A/N – We are almost done, one chapter left to go. If you have a scene you'd like to see in the wedding now is the time to tell me. **_

_**Thank you, everyone, for reading and following and favoriting and everything. **_


	14. Chapter 14

"_Dinner?" Blaise asked, opening the door and waving them both into the hallway. As they moved away down the hall Hermione muttered, "I am not changing my name." _

"_But it sounds so nice," Draco wheedled._

"_No."_

Rome was nice. Assisi was nice. The entire vacation went without a single problem, unless one were to count the unfortunate incident with the clerk in the men's store who found Draco significantly more attractive than Draco found him. Hermione finally had to do what Blaise spent the rest of the night calling her 'threatening face' to get the clerk to back off.

"Do it again," he begged for the fourteenth time, well into their third bottle of wine. "Do the look again. The way you eviscerated that little arsehole with about three words and a glare was perfection."

"I'll eviscerate you if you don't cut it out," she muttered, a threat that no one took seriously given she was on his lap thoroughly sloshed and barely dressed by that point.

"Draco," Blaise wailed in mock terror. "She's threatening me. Make her stop."

"I'm not going up against her," Draco laughed, his head leaning against Blaise's legs as he tried to pour another glass of wine. "She's Hermione-fucking-Granger, slayer of men's store clerks, hapless kidnappers and, oh yeah, that pesky Voldemort chap."

"I didn't slay _any_ of those people," Hermione said. After a brief pause she added, "using the word 'people' loosely for Voldemort."

"I did," Blaise said, fumbling around with her brassiere.

"Merlin, you are drunk," Draco said, watching him.

"Well I _did_," the man insisted.

"No, I mean the – "

"Got it!" Blaise announced.

"And to think you used to have a reputation as a suave ladies man," Draco said.

As Blaise tried to figure out how to remove the now unfastened bra, Hermione put one unsteady hand on his chest and asked, "What is the most morally questionable thing you've done as a spy type person?"

Draco groaned. "Hold on," he muttered, fumbling for his wand. "Let me get us all muffliatoed."

"What," Blaise said, setting his glass of wine down and now focusing more seriously on using both hands to get her bra off. "What makes you think I'm a spy type person? I am a very social man with lots of friends, that's all." He looked around their apartment. "And some kind of gross books. And not the fun kind of gross either, though I have some of those. Did you know – "

She put her hand over his mouth. "Those kidnappers, not so… they didn't keep their mouths shut. I know _everything_." She said the last in a singsong. "So tell me; I _promise_ not to go about messing up your cover."

"But you already know everything," he pouted a bit and tugged a strap down her arm.

She pulled it back up, which made the unfastened bra swing a bit, and said, "Nope. No more clothing comes off until you tell me."

"Meanie."

"Oh, just tell her," Draco said. "You want to and I want to ravish her and now you're just being stubborn." He slammed his wine glass down and it sloshed out and some splashed onto the cuff of his pants. "Oh… damn it."

Blaise shrugged. "Probably the most morally _questionable_ thing I've done is give those wankers money. Wankers, all of them." He said the last very seriously.

"Blaise," Hermione said, batting his hand away from her breast. "You're a dodgy dodger who's dodging the question."

"I am," he nodded. "Dodgy, I mean."

"Artful, though," Draco said, dabbing at his pants.

Hermione rolled her eyes and, pulling her wand out of the couch cushions, waved it at Draco and said, "scrougify."

"Hey!" he exclaimed. "That worked!"

"I know magic," Hermione said, nodding.

"I might have had too much," Draco said, eying his wine glass but Hermione had turned her attention back to Blaise. "I might have ravishing issues."

"Tell me," she insisted and he sighed.

"I make friends," he shrugged. "I listen to them, I go to their disgusting parties. I give money to their vile and disgusting things. Sometimes Draco comes with and flaunts his Dark Mark."

"Bona fide Death Eater," Draco agreed. "I'm very impressive."

"And then?" Hermione prompted.

"I tell people what they say, people who don't exist, you know, and they write up little reports that don't exist."

She poked him in the chest with her finger and he grabbed her finger and put it in his mouth and slowly sucked on it, swirling his tongue around while watching her.

"You cannot distract me, Blaise Zabini," she said, breathlessly, after a rather long moment.

"Can," he argued, letting the one finger go and reaching for another one but she put her hands behind her back and he made a little petulant frown.

"Fine. Wench." He closed his eyes and said, "And then, if it seems like one of them is charismatic enough to get a following, to be more than a disgruntled fool complaining over canapés that the world has changed, I kill him." He opened his eyes and she realized he was absolutely sober, some kind of wordless charm has stripped all his alcohol induced fuzziness away. That, she thought, must be a handy trick in his line of work.

"Oh," she said.

"Still like me?" he asked, eyes wary.

"Love you," she corrected and watched the tension around those wary eyes ease. "Tell me more about these gross books. The fun kind of gross, not the pureblood propaganda kind of gross."

He smiled and accioed a book over from the shelf. "Do you think you could do this?" he asked, turning to a well-thumbed page.

She looked at the drawing and said, finally letting him tug her bra off, "Well, I can try."

. . . . . . . . . .

"Mother," Draco leaned towards Narcissa and kissed her lightly on the cheek.

"Draco," she smiled. "How lovely to see you. And you brought Blaise." She dimpled at the other man. "How was your trip to Italy? Did you get a chance to see your mother?"

"It was very nice, Mrs. Malfoy, thank you for asking. And we did get a chance to see my mother, though only briefly. She'll be here for the wedding, of course, so we'll have a longer visit then."

"The… wedding?" Narcissa Malfoy raised a neatly shaped eyebrow.

"Well," Draco said, settling down into a chair even though his mother was still standing. He kicked his feet out in front of him, the picture of ease. "Despite her unfortunate memory issues Hermione is quite sure she still wants to marry us both. It will be a bit of a complicated affair, of course, but I'm sure we can manage it." He laughed. "Hermione wants to just elope back to Assisi but we're nagging her for a big event. She seems to think I have a bias towards excess but I'll probably get my way in the end."

"You usually do," Blaise agreed.

"We got you something in Italy," Draco continued, pulling out a small wrapped box and handing it up to his mother. She made a pleased sound and opened it, making another, even more pleased sound when she saw the intricate gold work – some might even call it fussy – on the elaborate necklace with emerald leaves.

"I do like emeralds," she said, pulling the necklace from the box. "Would you help me?"

"Of course." Draco rose gracefully to his feet and, taking the necklace from his mother, settled it around her neck and fastened the clasp.

"I do have one question," Blaise said and Draco smiled.

"Yes, dear boy?" Narcissa Malfoy asked as she settled down onto a settee.

"Why a curse and a kidnapping? It seems like overkill."

A terrible silence settled across the room.

"I don't know what you mean," Narcissa said at last turning from Blaise, who stood before her hands nonchalantly clasped behind his back to Draco, who was leaning down, his arms resting across the back of the seat she was on. He was staring rather fixedly at the necklace he'd just given to her.

"Really?" Blaise said. "You can lie so much better than that, Mrs. Malfoy. You lied to the Dark Lord. I don't think you're even trying."

"She's beneath you," the woman finally said, her voice filled with loathing. "She has no more right to be a Malfoy than some harlot you'd pull off the street. And the curse wasn't working. That ring you gave her… it kept deflecting everything. You'd never let her take it off again, I was sure. I had to resort to cruder methods."

"Funny thing, that." Draco said. "About the name issue. She's technically never even going to be a Malfoy. She's decided upon – "

"Insisted upon," Blaise murmured.

" – keeping her own name."

"Well," Blaise said. "She _is_ Hermione Granger, she who takes down kidnappers and Dark Lords."

"And shop clerks," Draco said.

"Indeed."

Narcissa looked at them both with irritation. "Whatever name she uses, she's not worthy of being your wife. Either of your wives. She's a mudblood. Blaise." She turned to the man. "You share my feelings on this, I know. I'm sure you've had your fun; I don't begrudge you your fun. I know that men have their needs, but…"

"Now that you mention it," Blaise said, "I should probably clear up a wee little misconception you seem to have. I don't share your disgusting, foul, vile and offensive feelings on blood purity. I never have, though I've kept my opinions on that matter conveniently quiet. Perhaps you've met my mother? The one quietly working her way through every elderly, wealthy wizard in all of Europe? She raised me to not judge a man based on his ancestry."

"Only on his bank account," Draco murmured.

"She does like you," Blaise admitted. "Fortunately for me, you're too young for her."

"I like you more," Draco said. "She scares me."

"You're marrying Hermione Granger," Blaise snorted. "My mother is nothing compared to her."

Draco laughed.

"Don't bother to send me an invitation," Narcissa snapped. "I won't condone this unnatural marriage and I will never, _never_ acknowledge any vile, half-blooded children you spawn with that whore."

Draco looked at her, a sad mix of anger and disappointment settling across his face. "I doubt you'll still be alive by then. That necklace? The pretty one with the emerald leaves? It's cursed. The same curse you put on Hermione, interestingly enough, though, of course, we've had it altered to change the trigger phrase."

Narcissa paled.

"I wouldn't try to take it off," Blaise said. "I've been assured that if you were to try that it would throttle you at once."

"What's the new phrase," Narcissa asked, her voice low and urgent.

"That would be telling," Draco said then, dropping all malicious humor, he added, "I'll defend Hermione to the death, mother. She's going to be my wife and Malfoy men defend their wives _no matter what_. You should have known that; you shouldn't have tried to hurt her. I would have tolerated your condescension, your little verbal knife twists but you should have known I would never accept an actual attack on my wife. Never."

Blaise held out his hand. "Shall we go?"

"Yes." Draco came around the settee and took his lover's hand, turning back to his mother one last time.

"For what it's worth, I'm sorry it came to this."

. . . . . . . . . .

The wedding was lovely. Hermione was able to restrain some of Draco's more ridiculous suggestions – there was, for example, no way she was going to ride in on a unicorn. She pointed out the intrinsic problem with that idea when he was buried within her and he had to admit she might have a point. Still, she mostly didn't bother to make more than token protests because he was just having so much fun.

She did absolutely refuse to wear the ridiculous dress he found. She was sure – well, mostly sure – he was kidding about that. "If I wore that I might be wider than I am high!" she'd exclaimed. "I would look ridiculous."

Luna, who'd agreed her to be maid of honor, managed to be ridiculous enough for both of them. Hermione had shrugged when asked what the bridesmaid dress should be and said, "I don't know. Find something you like."

It turned out that what Luna liked looked a bit like an upside-down green seashell. "The color seemed to work since you're marrying two Slytherins," she'd said when Hermione tried, without success, to contain her giggles when she saw it, "and I thought the image of Aphrodite rising from a clam shell seemed nice for a wedding."

"Didn't Aphrodite rise from sea foam?' Hermione had asked and Luna had shrugged.

"Close enough," she'd said. Draco had been charmed by the dress – though it was a bit more like wearable sculpture – and had begged her to take Hermione shopping with her when next she went. Luna had just looked at him until she was taken by a fit of giggles of her own that left Draco backing away, looking nervously at Blaise.

Kinglsey Shacklebolt performed the ceremony and if he and Blaise seemed to know one another perhaps a bit better than one might expect, well, Hermione forbore to comment upon that; Blaise's request for her security clearance had yet to come through and she remained officially ignorant of his work. He was just a social man who traveled quite a bit and had some fairly unpleasant books.

There was a minor scuffle when Shacklebolt pronounced, "You may now kiss the bride," and both men moved towards her. They finally each kissed one cheek before Hermione turned to kiss first Draco, who pulled her to him with a demanding, possessive yank, then Blaise, whose long, slow kiss elicited a few low whistles from less restrained guests. Hermione stepped back after that and the two men smiled at one another – satisfied, predatory smiles - before Blaise slid his hands through Draco's hair and made a show of kissing him somewhat longer than he'd spent with Hermione.

Harry and Ginny looked uncomfortable throughout the whole affair but wished the happy triple their best. Ron hadn't been able to find a date for his plus one but danced with Luna all night. When they left together Draco murmured to Blaise, "I wonder if he's sober enough to figure out how to get that contraption off of her."

"Oh gods, I hope not," Blaise replied. "The idea of him struggling with that shell will make me smile for days."

Mrs. Zabini brought not one but two elderly wizards with her. "I give them three months, tops," Blaise whispered to Hermione at the reception.

"They look like they're going to die happy, though," Hermione said.

"They always do," Blaise acknowledged.

"I was sorry to hear about your mother," Mrs. Zabini said to Draco. "Strangled by a cursed necklace. You think she'd have known better than to put on jewelry from an untrusted source."

"Yes," Draco said. "It was tragic."

When Hermione danced with Draco, her head resting on his shoulder, he murmured, "Happy?"

"Forever and always," she said.

"Even though you still don't remember?"

"I remember love," she said. "That's enough."

**~ finis ~**

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. . . . . . . . . .

_**A/N – Thank you, everyone, for following along with this little bit of fluff. I hope you enjoyed it.**_

_**You can see the wedding dresses at tinyurl dot com/qzqvz7o if you want more visuals than I provided with "green shell" and "pouffy". It's hardly relevant to the plot but silly fun.**_


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